Here’s a link to a short article on how breathing facilitates stress release.
This article says that rapid shallow breathing, as in fire breath, stimulates the energizing sympathetic nervous system, while slow deep breathing stimulates the calming parasympathetic nervous system.
I’d heard previously that emphasizing inhalations stimulates the SNS, while emphasizing exhalations stimulates the PNS.
I do know that long, slow exhalations are very calming.
Cross-posted on the Yoga Classes page of this blog…
Unwinding, a restorative yoga class, meets Sundays from 5:30-7 pm at Oak Hill Oriental Medicine, 7413 Old Bee Caves Road. We warm up with Sun Salutations, do asanas for low back and neck issues, and move into deeply relaxing, melt-into-the-floor poses, using a variety of props. Your body and soul will love it! $15. For more information, call 512-775-3053 (clinic) or email me at the address on the Contact page of this blog.
The series Beginner’s Yoga, Beginner’s Mind continues for another 12 weeks starting December 1. You can join us any time. We meet on Wednesdays, 7:30-8:30 pm, in a private home in Wells Branch. $10. Please call for more information as space is limited. 512-507-4184.
Contact me if you’re interested in co-creating any of the following classes:
To request a class, ask questions, and/or make a proposal, please call me at 507-4184.
I love having both hemispheres of my brain as resources, the left brain for practical matters, logic, reason, and the right brain for intuition, creativity, the big picture, connection with the Universe or the Source or Big Mind, whatever words you want to use to denote the unfathomable mystery in which we all live.
The right brain’s work is actually bigger than, and completely holds, the left brain’s work, which is in service to survival. Imagine that!!!
The right brain holds all other awareness not needed for survival. (Which is why stress can be so debilitating. If your focus is survival, literal or figurative, you’re probably not using your right brain.
Healing lies in the right hemisphere.
Western science has discovered that within a day, our brain hemispheres shift in dominance roughly every 90 minutes. This is often when people take a break from what they were doing — go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, stretch or stand up and walk around, make a quick phone call.
When the hemispheres switch, the nostrils also switch dominance.
You may notice that often, one nostril is more open, and that this changes. (Given of course that you don’t have a cold or allergies or obstructions to nose breathing.)
If you haven’t noticed that before, check it out. Which is more open now? When you wake up? When you go to sleep? When you’re paying bills? When you’re praying or meditating or listening to poetry?
Nadi shodhana, also known as alternate nostril breathing, influences nostril dominance to balance the hemispheres of the brain. It’s a yogic breathing technique.
There are several YouTube videos available to show you how to do that. This one shows that you can place one hand under your armpit to help the hemispheres switch dominance. This one is good for actually learning the technique.
Being able to switch quickly from hemisphere to hemisphere, of course, gives one a great advantage. The hemispheres’ roles and personalities are so different, it’s like having access to two brains with great and various resources instead of just one.
And who doesn’t want more resources in life?
I find the practice calming and centering. When life seems to be coming at you too fast, which applies to most of us with jobs / families / businesses, nadi shodhana is a useful addition to your day.
I finally did holotropic breathwork yesterday evening with Patrice. It’s also known as rebirthing, since if you do it enough times, apparently you get back to, and release the trauma from, your birth experience.
I had no sense of time, memory, or when I acquired the energies I released. But release I most certainly did.
Patrice was a great coach. I didn’t know what to expect as she had me start exhaling through my mouth, then after a bit, adding inhalations through my mouth. (Both of these are such a no-no in yoga!)
She told me what I might expect (shouting, shaking, crying, coughing, all forms of physical/emotional release) and made it all sound perfectly okay to experience whatever came up for me. She helped me feel that it was safe to surrender.
She warned me not to fall asleep — that some people do that as a way to escape their emotions.
She did not have to worry about that!
Patrice had put a few needles in key points, including LI4 (associated with the ego and being grounded), and at various times, she moved her hands on my body to support the energy flow. She may have also done some medical qi gong (like reiki) on me. I wasn’t paying that much attention to her after a while…
Then we sped up the breathing. And nothing happened. The exhales were supposed to have a “ha!” sound to them, and after about 5 minutes of this, I started laughing. My ha! ha! ha!s became hahahahahaha’s. She laughed with me.
‘Cause, you know, it was totally ridiculous to be doing this! Ridiculously funny and silly and wonderful!
Then I coughed a little and that felt good so I coughed some more. Patrice helped me sit up on the table. Then I started roaring… It was like some energy was coming up from my stomach out my mouth, and it was fierce and loud, and I got red in the face several times as it just kept coming up and out of me.
And then my eyes started tearing and water gathered in my mouth, and I thought I was going to throw up. Patrice got a wastebasket.
And you know what? I never did, and she told me later she knew that I wouldn’t. But I didn’t know that. I was vomiting something. It felt real. It just wasn’t food. It was some nasty energy that had been inside of me, now coming out. Then that urge was over.
I laid back down. More of the ha ha ha. Faster! Sharper!
My legs soon wanted to move. Soon they were shaking involuntarily, much like in David Berceli’s trauma releasing exercises, except that my legs were straight with just a little support under my knees, instead of with my knees bent. My left hand also shook, but not my right — just like when I do the trauma releasing exercises.
I went through cycle after cycle of leg shaking. I even repeatedly kicked something out of my body (which I never do with TRE), then went back to leg shaking. The kicking seemed to be removing something energetic from my sacrum, which (if you know me or have been reading this blog regularly) is where some ancient issues have been residing in my body.
After awhile, I slowed down on the ha’s, drawing them out, making them long, and at the beginning of each exhalation, my legs would start quivering, and by the end of the exhalation, they were nearly still.
Winding down… At the end, Patrice was just rubbing my belly gently. I laid there, getting more and more still, feeling the surge of electrical energy in my body, just like after TRE.
Patrice said later that I was putting out so much heat, she had to open the door and let some cool air in. I was totally unaware of that.
I feel so grateful that I had the core strength and the stamina to stay with the process all the way through. Thank you, yoga!
So… to compare holotropic breathwork to David Berceli’s trauma releasing exercises from his book The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process…
The holotropic breathwork overuses the diaphragm, the breathing muscle. The trauma releasing exercises overuse the leg and hip muscles. With both, you deliberately create a state of overload or stress in the body, and the release brings up deeper stuff.
The trauma releasing exercises don’t include noise. I liked being noisy. But you can do the TREs in a hotel room and/or alone, so there you have it. Make noise if it works for you! There’s a place for them both.
The holotropic breathwork should definitely be done with a guide present, because you could get so wild, you might hurt yourself. (Apparently people do this in groups. That must be quite an experience!)
You can do the trauma releasing exercises alone, without a guide. At least, I’m guessing most of us can. For someone who’s recently been traumatized, it is probably best to have a guide present.
So, having heard of holotropic breathwork but not knowing what it is before doing it, this was my experience. And afterwards, Patrice gave me a compliment — that I went through a nice range of emotions.
I liked it. I want to do it again.
What are you aware of right now? The words you’re reading on the screen. Maybe the whole screen. Maybe what’s beyond the screen in your field of vision.
Notice how your eyes can move from a narrow focus on black and white pixels to the space beyond. How do each of these extremes feel?
Your hearing. Traffic. Heating and air conditioning fans. Insects. Voices. Walking. Typing. Water running. The sound inside your head. The sounds your breath makes.
Your body, probably sitting. Your weight against the chair/sofa/floor. Your feet on the floor. Tight places in your body.
Yes, go ahead and adjust.
Your skin, clothed and unclothed. Warmth, coolness. Your breath, coming and going. Feelings in your chest, belly, head.
Pay attention to those feelings. Are any of them emotions? Even very subtle emotions? Anxiety? Joy? Glee?
Discover how much you can refine your awareness about your emotional state and your body.
This is another side effect of meditation. Awareness just gets deeper and deeper, more and more refined.
There now. Better?
Note: Earlier this post mistakenly called this book Effortless Meditation. The actual name of the book is Effortless Wellbeing.
Elephantjournal.com posted this article a day or two ago. Being someone who appreciates simplicity and elegance, I found it very worth sharing. Read the article here.
A man named Evan Finer has written a little book called Effortless Wellbeing. The author of the post, Bob Weisenberg, writes that in his effort to boil meditation down to its essentials, Finer came up with three key skills:
Notice you don’t have to be sitting on a zafu with your eyes closed to use these skills!
Weisenberg states,
…there are few things in life which cannot be enhanced by relaxing your body, breathing more naturally, and gently focusing your mind.
Weisenberg goes on to list nine techniques for focusing the mind.
Body awareness is one of them, although it doesn’t mention whole body awareness. I really enjoyed getting perspective about my meditation technique, that it’s one of nine ways to focus the mind. Whole body awareness, preceded by a body scan, is working for me very well.
Comments?
If stress is the perversion of time, as the late poet John O’Donohue said, how do we unpervert time? This is how I do it: I love downtime and require it in my life in order to function at my best.
By downtime, I mean free time, unplanned time alone, or in silence if others are around. Sundays are very good for downtime. So are early mornings.
I’ve experienced periods in my life with little or no downtime. I’m particularly recalling several crazy years when I was working full-time, going to graduate school part-time, and raising a child as a single mother.
What was I thinking?
I’ve filled my life up with so much busy-ness (often wonderful busy-ness) that I had no time left for myself. I mean, life does have a lot to offer. There’s so much to learn and do, so many ways to be useful and helpful and engaged.
I don’t mean to put down living a disciplined life. I do live a disciplined life, structured by commitments such as yoga, meditation, my job, my family and friends, my other interests.
Yet I have learned that I function best when I have at least an hour of unstructured alone time every day. I’ve heard that that was also one of the Buddha’s requirements. Love that man! I feel I’m in good company on this.
My daily hour of downtime hasn’t always been workable, but it is workable now, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
Most of my days start off with downtime. I set the alarm for early, and then take my sweet time waking up. I’m talking 45 minutes or an hour here. If I need a little more sleep, I hit the snooze alarm and doze back off, repeating as needed.
Often I let my mind wander and see what’s up with that. What is my mind drawn toward? I tell you, often it’s goofy! That early, sometimes I imagine morphing dreamlike combinations of images that are completely unrealistic in “the real world”. The oddest random things — memories, questions, images, words — come to mind. It’s fascinating and amusing.
I check in with my body. I notice where I feel tight, when the energy isn’t flowing well, and I move to open myself up. Sometimes I do some tapping, a simple version of EFT without words just to get my energy flowing well. I roll my eyes and blink. I notice my breathing. I stretch. Oh, do I stretch!
And then at some point without much thought I’m ready to roll out of bed and onto my feet, and move on to what’s next: pee, feed cat, do yoga, sit.
This is so much more enjoyable than the grind of slamming the alarm off and hitting the ground running, which I have done more than enough of.
This feels like an utter luxury, yet it’s something money can’t buy. You have to arrange your life to be able to do this. You go to bed early enough to have an hour to yourself in the morning. You make this a priority and let other things drop.
You know, I wonder if I’m overcompensating for being out of balance for years. Oh well, that’s for someone else to say. This just feels so right. This is part of living my right life.
I hope you can join us, the Buddha and me, and begin to revel in each awakening to a new day.
I taught yoga yesterday morning and yesterday evening. Two classes in a day! I feel lucky to be able to do this.
The morning class was to 5th graders at my granddaughter’s school. At back to school night a couple of weeks, the 5th grade teachers said this year they would focus on fitness. They have arranged for the kids to get outside for 15 minutes a day, and they were seeking volunteers to help with healthy snacks and fitness activities.
When I was in grade school so many years ago, we got about 30 minutes outside every day. If it was rainy or snowy, we went to the gym. Sometimes our physical activity was organized into team sports, track and field, or games (remember Red Rover?), and sometimes it was just plain old free play on the playground — jungle gym, merry-go-round, slide, swings. It was active. It was fun. I loved it.
Last year my granddaughter’s class did not get to go outside except on rare occasions. They have PE (often in the gym) every third day, rotating with art and music.
Spending time outside every day is important, in my opinion. We need the sunshine, fresh air, and trees and sky to look at. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, exposure to nature suffuses us with more well-being. Fifteen minutes a day is a big deal.
With so many kids being obese these days, with the decline in school lunches and physical activity, I wanted to support their focus on fitness and volunteered to teach Hannah’s class some yoga. I won’t be able to sustain it all year, but I can spare 30 minutes one morning a week for a couple of months to teach them some yoga.
In fact, it just occurred to me that I can teach a few of them to lead the class after I stop teaching!
(And of course, it’s asana practice, not really yoga. We don’t get into philosophy — but yesterday I did include breath awareness and coordinating it with asanas, and I taught them that namaste means “I honor you”.)
About half the kids had done yoga or were at least familiar with it, and half were new to it. I cherish one little boy saying, when I had them do a seated side bend, “Hey, ma’am! This feels good!”
They were full of giggles and chatter, and I didn’t make any corrections. Let it be fun for them. Let them moo and meow in cat-cow.
I completely improvised. We were crowded onto a rug, limited to seated and standing poses that didn’t take up much room, and tabletop/dog. The first thing I taught was belly breathing. I crammed a lot of asanas into 30 minutes.
At the end we sat cross-legged with our backs straight and closed our eyes and paid attention to our breathing for one minute. During that minute, I heard a few whispers and giggles, and then … about 10 seconds of pure silence.
That silence was so powerful to me! I don’t think they get much of that.
I’ll return next week to teach yoga again. I will also teach them an NLP technique, Circle of Excellence, that they and their teacher will find useful this year, and for the rest of their lives.
In the evening, my Beginner’s Yoga, Beginner’s Mind class picked up again. We did four weeks together, had a week off, and are continuing for eight more weeks. These are adults, most of whom are really new to yoga. We meet in a home, moving the furniture aside.
What a joy it is to hear about them having more body awareness, noticing new strength, having more stamina!
I don’t improvise much in this class. Because of various students’ health issues, we take it slowly. We use props. I want them to feel safe and be safe. No yoga injuries! Taking yoga teacher training from a highly experienced Iyengar-certified teacher has given me the confidence I can do this. We are gradually building strength and flexibility.
We did a nice long savasana, and I got to use some NLP trancework, addressing the healing part within, asking it to communicate clearly to the conscious mind any new information about healing it would like to share.
Last Wednesday I had a chiropractic adjustment that felt like “the one I’ve been waiting for.” I reported to Dr. Collins on how the exercises from last month went. He had asked me to place shoes — like wedges — under specific parts of my lower back and pelvis so my body could experience what it feels like to be untwisted, doing this 15 minutes 2x a week.
After the second time, my body went through a “crisis day” where it felt like all the adhesions in my left leg were screaming, and then the pain faded. I got a sense memory of two different ways of my muscul0-skeletal-nervous system being organized — the habitual dysfunctional way and the aligned new way.
Last week, he did some muscle testing, then he positioned me and made an adjustment. I felt a quick pain in my left sacro-iliac (SI) joint.
And then nothing. Like being suspended in mid-air.
And then my body autonomically took a really deep, relaxing breath that told me this adjustment released a long-held pattern of tension.Sweet, blessed relief! This felt like the sweet spot I’ve been working so hard toward since February.
I noticed a need for silence and stillness and stayed home from work on Thursday. So far so good.
Friday night as part of yoga teacher training, we went to the Our Body exhibit — a display of human anatomy using real bodies that have been preserved, positioned, or cut open to reveal the structures inside.
And ironically, after being on my feet for over an hour filling up on anatomy, I began to feel the familiar old discomfort in my left SI joint.
By Saturday morning, my sacral ligament was inflamed. I attended yoga teacher training all day and took sublingual arnica, which helped some. Blood flow is good, but ligaments aren’t very vascular. When I got home, I reached for prescription anti-inflammatories.
Sunday was another crisis day. I took anti-inflammatories, sublingual arnica, arnica gel, and laid low, reading and resting and being still most of the day.
Today, less inflammation and pain, still have some stiffness.
I guess I wasn’t quite ready for the adjustment. I feel disappointed.
I noticed when my SI joints were aligned that the area between L5 and my sacrum felt tight. Also, after an adjustment, some walking is good, but standing is not. Valuable information.
Am I resisting change? Is there a part of me that doesn’t want to heal? I ask myself those questions and don’t get any clear answer. I imagine what it would feel like to be healed, and I realize I’ve held an expectation that once I get my lower back/sacrum/pelvis aligned, I will not only be pain free, but I will have rushes and beaucoups of energy.
Getting aligned (given my history of birth injury, PTSD, scoliosis, and car accident) is a two steps forward, one step back process.
At least I had a taste of it! That is so motivating. I can get aligned. I can learn how to hold the adjustment, just like I held the atlas adjustment that unwound scoliosis.
I haven’t posted about my sitting practice much lately because it doesn’t seem like there’s been much to say.
I do my three Surya Namaskar A vinyasas. I sit. I set the timer for 30 minutes. I get settled comfortably in siddhasana (knees wide, heels in close, centered one in front of the other, soles facing up), lengthen up my spine and center my torso over my pelvis, center my head over my torso, tilt my forehead slightly down. Close my eyes.
The beginning chime goes off, and I take a full deep breath and exhale, and that’s my most powerful anchor for meditation, that first breath. My energy body opens and comes to the forefront of my attention. I focus on my head — sensations of my energy body, my crown chakra, my third eye chakra, amygdala energy pressing forward, my entire forehead tingling, and face, ears, scalp.
And then I sense my entire head as one. All sensation part of a single system.
Then I move to my neck and upper torso, feeling my open throat and heart chakras (or feeling them open if they aren’t already), and all sensation in my chest, upper back, neck, shoulders, arms, and hands.
And then my upper torso and energy centers as one system.
Same below the diaphragm. I feel the energy of my third, second, and first chakras, my belly moving with my breath, my weight on my sit bones, my lower back, sacrum, perineum, and down my legs through my feet.
And then my lower body and energy centers become parts of a whole. I am three wholes now.
Then I merge the parts into one living, breathing, constantly changing energy system.
This is whole body awareness.
I notice how my attention moves as I also hold my attention on the whole.
I realize that I have visualized a map of my body based on looking in the mirror. My skin is an edge, a boundary between me and not me, in the mirror.
In sitting with my eyes closed, with awareness of my whole body, I let go of that map and feel. Just where does my nervous system go? Are there areas where there is no sensation? Areas that feel strong? Is there subtlety? Yes.
My nervous system (aka awareness) extends as far as I can hear, to traffic in the distance, jets and helicopters making noise from the sky. (Maybe one day I will sit with my eyes open.)
I am getting to know myself from the inside out.
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know that it’s been a struggle to be able to do this. I’ve been finding my way.
And here I am. I’m doing it! It feels full. I sit with wonder in constantly changing fullness.
It rocks.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 