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Yoga lineages flow chart

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Came across this awesome graphic this morning that shows the development of yoga over time. Bravo to Alison Hinks for creating it!

If you’ve ever wondered about the many different types of yoga and where they came from, this chart shows them very nicely.

Almost all my yoga experience has been in the Krishnamacharya lineage through Iyengar, although I have taken a class in Sivananda yoga in the Bahamas and took classes for a couple of years from a teacher whose background was in Integral yoga.

One omission I see is Shiva Rea. I understand she has studied with Krishnamacharya’s son and associates Desikachar, Mohan, and Ramaswami. (Maybe it was too difficult to show that!)

I’m unfamiliar with Babu Bhagwan Das, who is shown to have influenced Krishnamacharya. I haven’t encountered that name in my readings about Krishnamacharya. When I googled it, I got links to Bhagwan Das, the follower of Baba Neem Karoli who met up with Richard Alpert in India and took him to meet his guru. (Richard Alpert became Ram Dass.)

But Babu Bhagwan Das preceded Krishnamacharya, so obviously they are two different people in two different eras with similar names.

Just FYI, from Wikipedia, shramana refers to the belief that salvation is possible for anyone (in contrast to the Vedic caste system) and to monastic, ascetic traditions. It underlies Buddhism and Jainism. Buddha later shed shramanic practices, but Buddhism has a strong monastic tradition in Asia.

More on the therapeutic uses of trembling

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Apparently body tremor research is not a new thing in sports. Russians preparing gymnasts for Olympic competition in the 1970s induced trembling. It was called vibrational therapy then.

Since then, numerous studies have demonstrated that low-amplitude and low-frequency mechanical stimulation of the neuromuscular system has positive effects on athletic performance (Cardinale & Bosco, 2003; Torvinen et al., 2002; Bosco et al., 1999). For many years it was primarily used by elite athletes to help increase the strength and coordination of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems and to increase the rate at which athletic injuries heal (Bosco et al., 1999).

I’m not a competitive athlete. I had no idea. Maybe I’ll become more coordinated and heal more quickly!

I must say that I have been feeling really, really excellent lately, even given the stress of a new job, repeated repairs to my car, selling my house and moving.

This is after doing the trauma releasing exercises about eight times this month so far.

The web page goes on to say:

Over time vibrational therapy has developed as a serious field of research known as Biomechanical Stimulation ([BMS], Bosco et al., 1999). It is being used in physical therapy and rehabilitation programs to correct restricted body mobility, range of motion, the coordination of musculoskeletal and nervous systems and to increase the rate of healing injuries (Bosco, Cardinale, & Tsarpela, 1999; Bosco et el., 2000). BMS research has demonstrated that exposure to vibration frequencies between 20-50Hz increases bone density in animals. It is also helpful in providing pain relief and the healing of tendons and muscles (Muggenthaler, 2001). Vibrational stimulation between 50-150 Hz has been found to relieve suffering in 82% of persons suffering from acute and chronic pain (Feldman, 2004).

I could use more bone density and healing of tendons and muscles from my long-time alignment issues.

Hmmm. I’ve heard that cat purring speeds bone healing. That could be related. Thinking aloud here…

My father had Parkinson’s disease. I got excited when I read this! The shaking that happens in my left hand is similar to the Parkinson’s shaking.

Speculation in the field of BMS research suggests that tremors in humans associated with certain diseases may not be a symptom so much as the body’s attempt to detoxify itself through increased metabolism and lymphatic circulation which is produced by the body’s self-induced tremors (Feldman, 2004).

So maybe if I tremble and detox now, I won’t get Parkinson’s disease. It’s worth the effort.

The gut’s “second brain” influences mood and well-being

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This article from Scientific American is about the enteric nervous system (gut intelligence).

Some excerpts:

The second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. “A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut,” Mayer says. Butterflies in the stomach—signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response, Gershon says—is but one example. Although gastrointestinal (GI) turmoil can sour one’s moods, everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above.

The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the brain, and in fact 95 percent of the body’s serotonin is found in the bowels. Because antidepressant medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) increase serotonin levels, it’s little wonder that meds meant to cause chemical changes in the mind often provoke GI issues as a side effect. Irritable bowel syndrome—which afflicts more than two million Americans—also arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a “mental illness” of the second brain.

In a new Nature Medicine study published online February 7, a drug that inhibited the release of serotonin from the gut counteracted the bone-deteriorating disease osteoporosis in postmenopausal rodents. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) “It was totally unexpected that the gut would regulate bone mass to the extent that one could use this regulation to cure—at least in rodents—osteoporosis,” says Gerard Karsenty, lead author of the study and chair of the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University Medical Center.

Serotonin seeping from the second brain might even play some part in autism, the developmental disorder often first noticed in early childhood. Gershon has discovered that the same genes involved in synapse formation between neurons in the brain are involved in the alimentary synapse formation. “If these genes are affected in autism,” he says, “it could explain why so many kids with autism have GI motor abnormalities” in addition to elevated levels of gut-produced serotonin in their blood.

Measuring your stress level

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I want to have a baseline measure of my stress level at the start of this two-month Chronic Stress and Trauma Recovery Challenge.

  • My immune system is functioning well. I haven’t suffered from allergies or colds since last May.
  • I’ve never had high blood pressure. It’s usually about 100/70.
  • I usually sleep well. I take melatonin and Rescue Remedy Sleep when I don’t, and they work.
  • If negative emotions start to run away with me in the form of anxiety, fear, anger, or guilt, I do EFT and t-a-p them away.

Still, in the last six months, since August 3rd:

  • I completed yoga teacher training.
  • I left a job that was stressful to me.
  • I started doing new types of work (NLP coaching, teaching yoga), moving toward a new livelihood.
  • I downsized my stuff and put my house on the market.
  • My house was burglarized and my laptop and some other stuff stolen.
  • I had a collision that left my car in the shop for over a month, without rental coverage.
  • I started a three-month technical writing contract at a large corporation with a long but scenic commute.

All of this is stressful, according to the WebMD Life Change Stress Test. You’ve probably read before now that major life events, both negative and positive, are stressful. Now  you can measure your stress level online.

Stress can interrupt sleep and make you cranky. Chronic stress can raise your blood pressure, weaken your immune system, and affect physical and mental health. Wikipedia has a long list of the symptoms of chronic stress.

I took the test, and the results showed I have moderate stress. How are you doing on stress?

I believe that doing the trauma releasing exercises for the next two months will help keep me healthy. I just need to keep doing more of what I’m already doing (meditation, yoga, EFT). In addition, I’d like to get more aerobic and weight-bearing exercise.

And I will! I’m getting a kettlebell!

New findings on how meditation changes the brain

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Peg Syverson, Zen priest and my meditation coach at the Appamada zendo, sent out an email with a link to a New York Times article on meditation, saying “We told you!”

The article, How Meditation May Change the Brain, is by a writer whose husband went on a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat. He came back so energized and enthusiastic that he vowed to meditate for two hours a day through the end of March.

She wrote:

He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.

Sound familiar, those of you who followed this blog last year???

The writer admits she’s a skeptic — and then cites studies and researchers on how meditation changes the brain. The latest research shows measurable changes in gray matter that affect memory, learning, anxiety, and stress in a group that meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks, compared to a control group not meditating that had no such changes.

Other studies have shown meditation increasing empathy and compassion.

What the writer believes is that through meditation, her husband became empathetic enough that he now takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows she doesn’t like to do those chores.

She can go with that.

Oh, and here’s a link to the abstract of the findings about gray matter.

The evolution of the word “wellness”

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Back in April, the New York Times Magazine published an article in the series On Language on the word wellness.

Since that is what I’m going for here with this blog, I thought I’d summarize and share.

In 1979, wellness was not a word you’d hear every day. Today it is. My former workplace had a wellness committee and a wellness room.

Wellness is considered an antonym (opposite) to the word “illness,” and it’s been traced back to the 1650s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Wellness is a relatively new way, in the western world view, of looking at health.

The wellness movement really began after World War II. The preamble to the World Health Organization’s 1948 constitution states:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The author, Howard Dunn, went on to develop his ideas and publish a book, High-Level Wellness, in 1961. He defined high-level wellness as:

an integrated method of functioning, which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable

The book languished, ahead of its time. In 1972, a medical student picked up the book at a clearance sale and found its ideas inspiring. In 1975, he opened the Wellness Resource Center in Mill Valley, CA. He was constantly having to spell the word over the phone, it was so uncommon! Prevention magazine spread the word about the center, and eventually 60 Minutes did a segment on the center. The Times says:

The center promoted self-directed approaches to well-being as an alternative to the traditional illness-oriented care of physicians.

Then someone started a national conference on wellness, and it became both an academic topic and prestigious. The Berkeley Wellness Letter dissociated wellness from the perception of flaky hedonism in neighboring Marin County, and with a million subscribers, the word gained credibility.

Some people still ridiculed the word until the 1990s, when it became an everyday word.

I like this word a lot. (I also like well-being.) As a baby boomer, it’s exciting to be part of this paradigm change, from a focus on illness to a focus on wellness. We are lucky these days to live in a society that offers both kinds of medicine.

It does still seem that the traditional western paradigm still has a huge hold on the public’s imagination about health care. Otherwise (in my opinion), wellness practices would be taught in homes and schools from an early age — practices like eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep and exercise, and general awareness to be able to address problems as they emerge.

Add in occasional massage, monthly acupuncture, yoga, and meditation, and we’d have a healthy society. We would of course keep western medicine for when there were no alternatives!

What would that be like?

Article: Why meditation may help you live longer

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People who meditated for six hours a day (!) for three months were found to have more of an enzyme that can mitigate or perhaps even stop cell aging.

So it’s entirely possible according to scientists that meditation extends people’s life spans. Meditators know it probably does.

I’m pretty sure yoga does too, just judging by the long lives of people who devoted most of their lives to yoga, such as T. Krishnamacharya, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, B.K.S. Iyengar (still living). All lived to see 90, some more than 100.

So how does it work?

So how does meditation affect the machinery of cellular reproduction? Probably by reducing stress, research suggests. Severe psychological stress — particularly early in life and in the absence of social support — has been linked with poorer health, increasing risk for heart disease, stroke and some cancers. This is likely due to the negative effects of high levels of stress hormones on the brain and body. By reducing stress hormones, perhaps meditation contributes to healthier telomeres.

Stress is the enemy.

Read the article from Time magazine’s Healthland blog here.

Living with wholeheartedness takes courage, compassion, connection, and vulnerability

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Often when someone asks me to use my NLP training to help them move through a problem state to one of resourcefulness, I have just read or seen or heard something that applies in their situation.

I bring that new information in, and it helps them expand. (I dislike the term “solving problems,” because it seems so linear. Instead we dance with problems, move with them, do the tango, maybe even a little jitterbug, and always end up with new possibilities.)

I do not know how this works, that I find information and inspiration just in time, but I am grateful for these synchronicities. I feel plugged in to the cosmos when this happens. Thank you for taking care of me, cosmos, since I’m meeting up with someone later to play with NLP.

This morning I encountered a wonderful TED Talks video that Alan Steinborn posted on Facebook. (Alan walks with beauty and resourcefulness.)

I can tell this video is going to be a huge resource for me and for those I work/play NLP with.

It’s also incredibly apt for year’s end, when many of us search for the core issue to acknowledge and attend to and dance with during the coming year.

Dear blog readers, read this post or watch the video. Which area of your life can benefit most from your loving attention in 2011?

In the 20-minute video, the gifted and funny Ph.D. social worker Brene Brown discusses her research findings about shame and worthiness. Click the link and watch it if you have time; if not, read on for a synopsis.

Brown says there is only one variable between the people who have a sense of love and belonging and those who struggle for it and are always wondering if they’re good enough:

The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging.

That’s it. That’s what separates the people who live their lives feeling worthy from those who don’t. A belief in their own worthiness.

(NLP works with beliefs.)

To break this sense of worthiness down even more, Brown reviewed her research and found that those who feel worthy share these characteristics:

  • Courage. It’s not the same as bravery. It means to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.
  • Compassion. They are kind to themselves first, and then to others.
  • Connection. They are willing to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they actually are.
  • Vulnerability. They are willing to do something first, to do something where there are no guarantees.

Brown then went to a therapist to work on her own vulnerability issues. She noted that this single characteristic is at the root of shame and fear and the struggle with worthiness, and also of joy, creativity, belonging, and love.

With a humorous display of her own worthiness, she relates how she told the therapist she didn’t want to deal with family or childhood issues, she just needed some strategies!

She spent a year in therapy struggling with her vulnerability, knowing it’s a huge issue for so many others, and then spent two more years on this research.

She states plainly:

We are the most in debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.

We numb ourselves to avoid our vulnerability.

You cannot selectively numb emotion.

When we numb, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.

To paraphrase, “and then we’re miserable and feel vulnerable, and we numb it, and the vicious cycle starts over.”

Besides addiction, we use certainty to numb — certainty about religion, certainty about politics, certainty about our opinions.

We also use perfection to numb. We perfect our bodies. We perfect our children. Brown notes that children are wired for struggle. If we can let them struggle and also believe they are worthy of love and belonging, wow, what a world that would be to live in!

We also numb by pretending that what we do doesn’t have an effect on people. Oil spills, recalls, global warming, and so on. We avoid taking responsibility and making amends.

To change this direction, she recommends that we…

  • Let ourselves be seen.
  • Love with our whole hearts, even though there are no guarantees.
  • Practice gratitude and joy.
  • Believe that you are enough.

I hope this helps you strengthen your wholeheartedness and believe in your worthiness for love and belonging.

Guest post: Opinions Are, by Carin Channing

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Note: I am opening up my blog to occasional guest posts from other bloggers. This first one is from Carin Channing, who blogs at Stay Open: Spiritual and Self-Care Space.

I get the sense of dragging myself forward from the chest or the gut into some unknown where I think I should be arriving.

I read this tonight:

“My judgments, my ego-tripping, my attempts to plan and to know what the future holds or to try to drive the future in any way — all futile and hung up on a desperate mind, clinging to an image of importance that simply cannot stand against the field of a quiet mind.”

I wrote it a few months ago on the Be Here Now blog.

It continues to be relevant. Especially about the attempts to plan and to know what the future holds. I really know nothing about anything. I write about stuff, but it’s playing. It’s creating if I’m not thinking about it and it’s just coming out my fingers. So. The image of importance. There’s this thing that thinks there is such a thing as good/bad. And it’s a noisy voice, and not only is it noisy within, but also in the supposed without – that is, that which appears outside of us. The straddling of the two worlds, said a friend to me, is the hell you are in.

The world where there’s right/wrong. This pulls on me. Wants my attention. Wants to hold my head under water.

Today the Text Support message that I sent out said:

“The overall ‘why’ doesn’t matter. How would you know anyway? All you need to know, and will always know, is the next right thing to do. Even if it’s do nothing.”

And as I sit here and type and mess around a little on the internet, I keep feeling these pulls (as mentioned above). The thoughts are about 1) eating, 2) exercising, 3) taking a bath. The pull keeps telling me which one I’ll do when and justifying its existence by asserting that there’s a should out there somewhere about the order of things and about anything else beyond sitting here typing.

I exercised every day no matter what for two years. Even if I just did a little movement or stretching, it counted. Some months ago I let it slip and now, well, I exercise when I do. And what I’m faced with, what’s left, is this massive judgment, insisting that something other than the natural flow of the moment is what’s necessary and somehow even morally correct.

I remain healthy and am not stagnant. A shifting occurred. Nothing occurred. All of that is past. All of everything is past except the exhale I’m doing right now and the gnat that is flying across my field of vision and the heat of the laptop under the heels of my hands.

What is it that I don’t trust?

See? The two worlds. Being guided by the mind, or simply being guided.

Not like either is right or wrong. {giggling now} It’s just that opinions are. Look, there goes one now.

To continue the conversation with Carin, please also visit Stay Open: Spiritual and Self-Care Space. Become a fan of Stay Open Facebook Page. Submit questions to (submit questions to carina@nowstayopen.com).

Santa as guru: Santaji

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Somewhat related to my previous post, click here to read the article 6 Lessons Santa Teaches Better Than Any Guru, by Ed & Deb Shapiro, published in elephantjournal.

Excerpt:

4. He has great psychic powers: flies in the sky with reindeer, descends chimneys without getting covered in soot, goes by many names and forms, and is extraordinarily elusive. Has anyone actually ever seen him? The lesson here is that we can all do more than we think we can, and we don’t need to be applauded. We can practice random acts of kindness quietly, simply, without bringing attention to ourselves.