Grama's Wisdom

This is a photo of my mom's mom.  Grama and I spent a lot of time together growing up.  She was very English and proper, drank tea, kept a stiff upper lip and believed in never, ever airing our dirty laundry.  When she died, we found an old folded paper in her bedroom side table.  In her own handwriting, she had copied the following, probably from a book as she was a voracious reader.  In fact, in her 90th year, she taught herself to use the internet so she could read biographies online.  She'd been through all the large print editions in the library.

"Just for today, try this experiment.  

Decide that you cannot possibly control everything that happens anyway, you are going to release all your worries to the force that controls the universe.

You are going to relax and let it go.  

If you relax, you will be able to handle all your problems with a small fraction of the effort.

Relax your entire body and mind, right now, and decide that as a visitor with a very small stay on this planet, you will let whatever happens, happen.  For today, you will not try to force your life.  You will stay in perfect harmony with the universe."

Around the time Grama might have copied this wisdom, across the world in India, a young man was writing about his father's teachings.  Krishnamacharya has often been referred to as the father of modern yoga.  He trained BKS Iyengar and Sri Pattabhi Jois, both founders of influential styles of yoga today.  His son, Desikachar, was writing about what is REAL yoga.  He turned to the Yoga Sutras, an ancient text outlining the complete path of yoga for liberation, and derived the truth of yoga to be a steadying of the mind.  He said his father taught that flexibility and challenging poses made one a gymnast, not a yogi.  So what defines a "steady mind"?  Desikachar said his father encouraged students to look to their relationships, with family, friends and colleagues.  Is there steadiness?  Respect?  Compassion?  This is where we really practice yoga.

Grama never practised yoga, never lived to see me become a yoga therapist.  She wasn't new age, or overtly religious, or given to leaning on emotional "crutches".  We were so surprised to discover her connection to the above writing.  This is the kind of sentiment that we share in yoga classes all the time.  As students try a new pose, or explore moving in an area that was previously painful, they are practising finding steadiness in difficult situations.  This patience and calm detachment is the foundation of most mindfulness traditions and meditation.  Who knew that Grama felt this way?

When you interact with family, friends or colleagues, what wisdom might be "hidden away in a drawer"?  How would your life change if you opened to connect on this level, seeking steadiness in relationships?  You could begin practising yoga without unrolling a mat at all if you are willing to start exploring life in this way.

Namaste.

Oh baby - You're eating what???

It's January.  I am reading all the magazines and blog posts about clean eating.  No dairy.  No meat.  No gluten.  No sugar.  Ugh!!!  So what can you eat????

Research is increasing emerging to convince us that our gut flora is deeply influential to our health.   Here are a few examples:

1.  Depression:  Research from McMaster University earlier this year determined that levels of gut bacteria in babies and younger children reflect propensity towards depression and anxiety in adulthood.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150728110734.htm

2.  Immune Function:  A new understanding of the essential role of gut microbes in the immune system may hold the key to dealing with some of the more significant health problems facing people in the world today, researchers say in a new analysis.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23426535

3.  Obesity:  New research connects not only weight gain, but diabetes and other inflammatory conditions like cardiac disease and cancer to gut bacteria.  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-help-make-us-fat-and-thin/

I feel compelled to work on my diet.  In the second half of my century on earth, I have joint pain, a tendency toward melancholy and hormonal craziness.  Don't we all?  But what if being a little more mindful could increase my energy and boost my concentration?  What if I could finally shed a few pounds????

With this inspiration bright in my soul, I scoured my recipe book.  I love recipes.  I copy them from facebook, pull them from magazines and share them with friends.  The treasure trove is extensive.  

Tonight's dinner is vegan, plant based and follows our clean eating guidelines.  Honestly,  it was yummy and filling.  A square of dark chocolate for dessert completed my bliss.

Chickpea & Lentil Curry

Mild and flavourful.  Easy to prepare.

Saute one chopped onion in coconut oil or ghee (clarified butter used extensively in Indian cooking).  Add two cloves minced garlic and 1 tsp chopped fresh ginger.  Stir in 1/2 tsp cinnamon, a pinch of ground cloves, 1/2 tsp cardamom and 1 tsp cumin.  Enjoy the spicy aroma as you add 1 Tablespoon curry powder.  Once well browned, add 2 cups water, 1 cup stewed tomatoes, 1/2 cup canned coconut milk and 1 cup red lentils.  Season generously with salt.  Simmer for about 30 minutes until thickened and lentils are tender.  Add one drained and rinsed can of chick peas.  

In the meantime, cook basmati rice.  I never owned a rice maker until my brother in law passed away several years ago.  With such limited storage space in my kitchen, I thought these fancy appliances were out of my reach.  I have totally reconsidered!  The secret to great basmati rice, so it tastes like the Indian restaurants, is to let it sit in the rice maker for 30 - 60 minutes post.  It is fluffy and dry then.  To make this dish really sing, add some flaked coconut as you cook the rice.

Serve with chopped cilantro and fresh lime juice squeezed on top.

Spinach Salad

The dressing here is a raw sunflower seed puree that is reminiscent of Ceasar salad.  Adds protein and fibre to your meal.

Soak 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds in 1/2 cup almost boiled water for one hour.  Blend mixture with 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice, 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, 1 Tablespoon raw honey, 1 tsp tamari and 1 garlic clove in a food processor until smooth.  Toss with baby spinach, chopped veggies and raw sprouts.  Awesome!

Total protein for this meal: 24 grams plus tons of iron, fibre, vitamins and minerals.  So if you would like to experiment with clean eating, this menu covers the bases and provides the nutrients you need to build gorgeous gut bacteria.

Weight Loss with Yoga

It will be the same everywhere you look this month.  There will be crowds at the gym.  There will be talk at work about signing up for the next challenge or cleanse.  Your inbox will be inundated with THE secret to finding a thinner you.

Can yoga help you lose weight?  Is it safe or accessible to every body?

You would expect a hot yoga flow class would be the best to burn calories and build cardio.  The laying around breathing and stretching kind of yoga is good enough for relaxation, but it couldn't possibly help you firm up!  Could it?

There are problems with the normal approach to fitness:

1.  Weight loss has a lot more to do with diet than it does exercise.  (http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/expert-answers/weight-loss/faq-20058292)
When you ramp up your activity level, your appetite naturally comes alive.  The 300 calories that you just burned on your power walk for the last 45 minutes will be filled in with the muffin you next eat because you're hungry!  Exercise is important to build muscle (which burns more calories than fat tissue), to maintain strength and to work all body systems, such as circulatory and endocrine.  But the math just doesn't support using exercise alone as a weight loss strategy.

2.  Many self improvement programs assume that you are imperfect now and must DO something to change yourself.
Psychologically, this can create a great deal of dissonance.  The goal is always changing and is usually just beyond our reach.  The business model of the fitness industry depends on us being unhappy with the current state of affairs.  The stress of this dissonance can lead us to abandon our fitness program.  At the very least, approaching exercise with this mindset can be a form of self aggression, increasing the risk of injury and adding stress hormones to our system.

3.  Exercise feels like it is releasing stress but it is actually continuing the stress response.  
The human animal is designed to exercise when there is a survival threat.  No sabre toothed tiger chases you to the treadmill but your nervous system reacts as if there were one.  The stress hormones that give you power to sprint or haul the kettle bell are now being utilized in the manner that they were designed to be.  This is why exercise feels like it's relieving stress.  The stress hormones that built all day at your desk or when you were struggling in traffic didn't get metabolized and that stress we feel differently.  After your workout, there will probably be little time to rest so the body does not repair from the energy expended on the stressful events of your day.

4.  Many fitness activities involve repetitive movements that can create joint misalignment and subsequent injury.
Walking the same route around your neighbourhood or following the same program on your elliptical machine results in the same muscles firing in the same ways for thousands of repetitions each session.  We are encouraged to get moving, and that is vitally important, but varying the routine is even more vital.  Rather than focusing on calories burned, we would be wise to look at the degree of different ranges of motion asked of our muscles.  Cardiovascular health can be maintained in short bursts of intense activity for just a few minutes a day.  Long sessions of steady state cardio exercise, such as on a treadmill or bicycle, is often not the most effective investment of your time (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-advisor/high-intensity-interval-training-is-it-really-the-holy-grail-of-exercise/article16891839/#dashboard/follows/)

Yoga can offer weight loss benefits by addressing some of these traditional weaknesses.

1.  A more mindful lifestyle naturally and organically includes a more careful diet.
Slow yoga is an experience that encourages us to connect with our present moment.  We sense how to move, how to breathe and what is happening internally.  After experiencing that connection with our bodies, we are less likely to feed it unhealthy foods.  And if we do choose to indulge, it is with awareness and in a greater context of healthy behaviours.

2.  Yoga encourages self compassion and self awareness.  It respects the individual experience.
Often class is conducted with dim lighting, even eyes closed, so the temptation to measure our performance is minimized.  A gentle, or therapeutic, approach to yoga is a loving way to interact with your amazing body.  Movements are routinely modified or even skipped altogether depending on what your body needed this practice.  It is a unique experience for many of us to move our bodies slowly, comfortably and lovingly with no pushing or aggression.

3.  Gentle, or therapeutic, yoga reminds our systems how to relax.
It's a high octane world we live in.  The natural balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activation is skewed toward stress response (sympathetic activation).  This is evidenced in our sleep, digestive, pain, concentration, disease and obesity issues  (for a good read about the effect of stress on the body read "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky).  A recent study on behalf of the American Diabetes Association showed that restorative, gentle yoga reduced belly fat two and half times more effectively than other forms of exercise in the study.  It seems counter intuitive that laying around, pretty much doing nothing, could help you lose weight.  It is the stress hormones, that are inflammatory in nature, that contribute to the fat retention.  Cortisol in particular has been cited in belly fat retention in many studies.  Slow, gentle yoga (such as a restorative class) encourages the opposite type of hormonal activation that brings repair to the inflammatory responses of stress.  (http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-tips/surprising-way-gentle-yoga-can-help-you-lose-serious-weight)You could try the posture in the photo above for 20 minutes before bed or I like it as a transition from working to a relaxing evening at home.  If you were able to add a longer practice, 1 to 1.5 hours, once or twice a week, you would likely see results.

4.  Yoga builds strong joints.
A well constructed yoga class offers each joint of your body a full range of motion movement.  In gentler forms of yoga, this is accomplished without any strain on the joint so those with pain or restrictions can still participate.  If your class includes weight bearing poses, this often works the muscle eccentrically, which means the muscle is lengthening while working.  In this way, the muscles stay flexible yet strong which means more fluid movement for you.  If you are building a yogic weight loss program, including some more vigourous classes is recommended respecting your body at all times.  Many of the hybrid yoga classes offered publicly move very quickly in very crowded rooms.  The best instructor ever can only really monitor 10 - 15 students well at a time.  The more physically challenging the practice, the greater risk of losing yoga benefits.  The root of yoga is self compassion and self awareness.  Jumping into a too physically oriented class unmindfully will set back weight loss.

The bottom line....
Move more.  Move mindfully.  Rest more.  Invite love into your relationship with your body to bring healing and to ultimately live happily in the body we have now.

How Yoga Therapy can help Anxiety

My first exposure to Generalized Anxiety Disorder was when my 15 year old son began
- getting in trouble at school,
- dominating our household with what were basically temper tantrums
- not sleeping or sleeping waaaay to much
- having panic attacks where he was convinced he was dying
- talking about ending his life.

As any panicked parent would do, we sought professional help.  The psychiatrist prescribed an anti-depressant called Prozac.  This drug has been associated with an increased suicide risk in teens, so my son and I made the joint decision to seek out alternatives.  The doctor was very upset and accused me of allowing my son to suffer needlessly.  I felt awful!  But my son, with wisdom beyond his years, and intelligence very common in anxious people, wondered what was so bad about a little suffering?

In his innocence, he recognized a key spiritual truth.  As M. Scott Peck wrote in his classic book, "The Road Less Travelled", life is hard.  As Buddha, and the ancient yoga philosophers recognized, pain is part of human experience, but suffering is optional.  So what my son had intuitively realized was that resistance to his sensitivity was causing suffering.  The medication would have dulled his reactions to his sensory world, but he wouldn't learn how to do that without some other tools.  He would FEEL life very acutely, but by utilizing yogic tools he could adapt.

Do any of the following symptoms describe what you or your loved one are feeling?

1.  Physiological symptoms include:
     a) muscle tension
     b) GI distress, such as IBS
     c)  pulse irregularity or elevated pulse rate
     d)  disturbed breathing or difficulty taking a full breath
     e)  panic attacks (these feel like cardiac arrests sometimes)
     f)  sleep disruption, easily fatigued
2.  Mood issues include:
     a)  uneasiness, agitation, feelings of panic
     b)  feeling overwhelmed
     c)  irritability or anger
3.  Racing thoughts can be troublesome and can focus on:
     a)  worrying, apprehension, obsessiveness
     b)  preoccupation with potential harm
     c)  catastrophization
     d)  repetitive thoughts
4.  Behaviours that are uncomfortable for you include:
     a)  avoidance of tasks or normal work
     b)  restlessness, pacing, rapid/erratic movements
     c)  compulsive or impulsive behaviour
     d)  increased rate of speech, pitch & volume

This list of symptoms describes Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a nervous system imbalance that prevents a person from finding enough rest in their daily cycle to complete proper restoration and repair of the body and mind.  The standard clinical protocol is to prescribe medication that chemically shifts the balance of the autonomic nervous system between sympathetic nervous system dominance (stress response) to further along the continuum to parasympathetic nervous system response (rest & digest mode).  We normally shift continually according to what is going on in our sensory world without being conscious of how this shift is occurring.  For those with Anxiety, however, their nervous system has locked into more activation in the stress end of the spectrum and is having difficulty shifting on its own.

If you are interested in exploring alternatives to medication, or additional tools, here are list of interventions used in Yoga Therapy that may help you find a healthier balance in your autonomic nervous system.

1.  Physiological Symptom Help:
     a)  simple movement/stretching timed with specific breathing patterns
     b)  breathing practices such as extending the exhales
     c)  guided relaxation sessions with specific scripts to help shift nervous system focus
2.  Mood Symptom Help:
     a)  meditation
     b)  singing, chanting, mantra repetition
     c)  prayer
     d)  using the yamas & niyamas (from the Yoga Sutras) to guide in forming right relationships and right associations
3.  Help for the Thoughts:
     a)  single pointed focus meditation, like breath watching
     b)  self reflection, studying inspirational texts, encouraging a search for the big questions in life
     c)  cognitive reframing (such as cognitive behavioural therapy or pratipaksha bhavanam as it's referred to in the Sutras)
4.  Therapeutics for Anxious Behaviour:
     a)  creating structure, establishing intention (sankalpa in yoga speak)
     b)  building self restraint through selective renunciation (small self disciplines help build impulse control over time)
     c)  rituals of self care (such as aromatherapy)
     d)  performing selfless service (karma yoga)

As you can see from this list of possible practices, being super fit or flexible is not necessary.  Most of these activities are free or quite inexpensive.  All have no negative side effects and contribute to a healthier person overall.  These prescriptions are suitable for all ages.  Most people benefit from an approach that considers all four types of symptoms.

A certified and professionally trained Yoga Therapist could help you decide which combination of practices is most appropriate for you and help you develop a personalized action plan.  He or she can also meet with you over time to continue to support and encourage your path to health.

So what about our house?  How did the Anxiety work out?  My son is in grad school, lives with his partner and is still very sensitive and intelligent.  My admiration for his courage and strength while facing his pain, which was and is very real, has grown over the last ten years.  It has been really hard work for him, and for the many yoga therapy clients that I have had the privilege of sharing with, but these Sensitive People have discovered that secret.  Life can be challenging, but suffering is reduced when we let go of resistance to our true natures.

If you don't have access to a Certified Yoga Therapist (an online list is available at www.iayt.org), this is a home video from one of my teachers and provides excellent at home practices to get you started:  "Viniyogatherapy for Anxiety with Gary Kraftsow" and can be ordered through www.pranamaya.com.

Using Yoga to Heal

Open any magazine or listen to any television program about health, and they are talking about yoga, meditation, breathing or mindfulness.  So what is it about yoga (and these other practices are all part of yoga) that is catching this level of attention?

Are there secret stretches or poses?  Is there a special mantra?  Do you need to be a particular body type or personality to benefit?

Although yoga can include stretches, mantra, visualizations or breathing techniques, these are all just pathways to the same portal.  The unique combination of yoga elements that helps YOU find healing is where the professionals can help.  But healing is within each one of us and awaits you to invest in that journey.

The way we feel is so much more than a collection of bones and muscles.  As humans, we have a complex matrix of feelings, experiences and physical sensations that combine to form our current reality.  Everything that has even happened to you (even in utero!) is colouring how you interpret and catalogue today's events.  One famous experience, regarding pain management, tracked groups of people who suffered paper cuts.  One group had the injury at home while relaxing, the other while at work.  Can you guess which group reported greater pain?  Medical science is clear that the context of the sensation is highly influential on the level of suffering.

What if you could change that context?  What if you could radically alter the way you interact with your day to day world?  This is where yoga healing starts.

So much of our lives are spent improving things, judging, analyzing, ruminating, planning.  Can you remember a time, even a very brief one, where you got a sense of something beyond that?  Maybe you were watching a sunset, or listening to an amazing piece of music, or you held a new baby, and there was just this peace for a second.... a sense that the world was beautiful after all.  That realization can bring deep emotion, even tears.  And our busy minds quickly usurp our bliss and bring us back to the worrying and planning.

Yoga invites you to deliberately cultivate that peaceful, contented feeling.  It might be the only activity in your day that does that.  It's about taking time and making that commitment to develop that context that minimizes suffering.  It doesn't have to take hours every day.  Research suggests that, with practice, you can begin rearranging your brain activity in as little as 30 seconds!  Focusing on non-reacting, taking slow even breaths through the nose and thinking kind-hearted thoughts for just 10 minutes at a time can effect lasting change.

Yoga is not about mastering an impossible gymnastics move or losing 20 pounds.  Those things may happen but yoga is more about your mind as this is the place where the context will shift.  To learn more about healing yoga, please visit our website at www.yogacentreniagara.com.  If you live outside the Niagara Region (Canada), look for a certified yoga therapist credentialed by the International Association of Yoga Therapists.  That professional can advise you on how to use the ancient practices of yoga for healing and finding greater joy in your life, warts and all.

Mindful Eating: The Non-Diet

It’s the time of year that we can be filled with regret that we indulged so heavily during the holiday season.  Our good intentions on January 1 are proving a little more difficult to maintain as the cold, gray days drag on.  It’s time to take a whole new look at how we fuel our bodies, letting go, once and for all, of the label “dieting”.

 

New neurological research is helping science to understand how malleable the brain can be and giving us support in the ancient practices of mindfulness.  New technologies can actually measure brain activity and indicate the precise optimum time of intervention in a habitual behaviour (“Breaking Habits”, Scientific American, November 2014).

As human beings, we are constantly in the flow of waves of sensation.  Being mindful means recognizing the inevitability of these waves of sensation and greeting them with curiosity, openness and compassion.  Cravings and hunger cues are waves of sensation.  The model below suggests one way to greet these sensations. (International Journal of Yoga Therapy, No. 22, 2012)

 

When we react habitually to the wave of sensation, for example cravings for a sweet treat, neurological pathways in the brain are reinforced.  We may get to the end of the treat and not really have full sensory recollection of the experience.  How did I get to the bottom of the bag of Oreos anyway???

Mindful eating asks us to recognize the craving as sensation and ride that wave.  If we can complete the ride, new neurological pathways have been initiated that may help us create new, healthier behaviours.

Pausing before eating makes sense as hormones that signal hunger and satiation take time to emerge.  For example, ghrelin is often called the hunger hormone.  Its call is partly felt in the mesolimbic reward center of your brain, where feelings of pleasure and satisfaction are processed.  This hormone spikes on a schedule depending on when you are used to having this satisfaction of fuel.  Finding an alternative behaviour that also stimulates this pleasure center in the midbrain may help curb the craving.

There is leptin which is an appetite suppressing hormone.  It can take 20 minutes or more for the body fat, which produce leptin, to receive the signal that we have had enough.  For many of us, we can absent mindedly consume the cookies, some soda and some chips in that time.  There are other gut chemicals and at least two dozen other hormones that play a role.  The more overloaded the system is, the weaker the feedback loop becomes.  In other words, if we have a history of eating indiscriminately or more than we need, it gets harder to read when we really need fuel.

 So how can mindful eating help?

1. Ride the wave of sensation.  Feel the symptoms of craving food without judgement, without needing to act upon them.  Just for a few minutes.
2. Do something else.  Mindfulness practices such as breath watching meditation (three minutes is enough to initiate a change), easy stretching timed with deep breathing or focusing on physical sensations in other body parts like feet or hands can ground you.
3. Eating more slowly.  Take one or two Oreos and really register the colours, textures, smells and sounds of eating ever so slowly.  It may take 10 minutes just to eat one cookie!  
    

For a video guiding you to try mindful eating, please refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5DfLKgJP8c.

 

For more information on mindfulness, meditation and your health, please email yoganetworkniagara@hotmail.com.

 

The Nose Knows, But So Does Your Skin

     From the weekend edition of the New York Times (November 8 - 9, 2014) comes a fascinating article on receptor cells for the olfactory (smelling) system of our bodies.  Smell is one of the oldest human faculties, yet research is rapidly revealing unknown data.  Scientists have discovered that odour receptors are not solely confined to the nose, but are found throughout the body.  Our skin is bristling with olfactory receptors, as are our organs.  Smelling with something other than our nose might sound odd at first, but if you think of olfactory receptors as specialized chemical detectors, then it makes a lot of sense for them to be in other places.

     Some of the interesting studies include:
1.  Skin abrasions healed 30 percent fasting in the presence of the odour of sandalwood.
2.  Olfactory receptors found inside the testes function as a kind of chemical guidance system that enables sperm cells to find their way toward an unfertilized egg.
3.  The prostate gland, when exposed to an odour found in roses and violets, appeared to prohibit the spread of cancer cells.
4.  Bathing the receptors in muscle tissue with a smell like lily of the valley promoted the regeneration of tissue by stimulating the growth of stem cells.
5.  Olfactory receptors in the human lung act as a safety switch against poisonous compounds by constricting the airways when exposed to noxious substances.

     Receptor cells are a "lock and key" systems, with an odour molecule the key to the receptor's lock.  Only certain molecules fit with certain receptors.  When the right molecule comes along and it alights on the matching receptor, it sets in motion an elaborate choreography of biochemical reactions.

    Reflecting on this scientific knowledge, one might marvel at the perception of ancient yogis.  Yogic wisdom sees the five senses as "tattvas" and assigns each sense affinity to one of the elements of the universe and a chakra.  The nose is associated with the earth element and the first chakra.

    Isn't it interesting that the muladhara chakra (root chakra) is concerned with basic human survival such as tribal connections, family, where to live, what to eat.  This elemental survival data is crucial to us even today.  Our whole bodies are constantly scanning our environment and assessing any action that might need to be taken to maintain security.  This happens largely behind the scenes, without your conscious direction.  Many people who are experiencing health issues, and things like Generalized Anxiety Disorder, may benefit from considering olfactory receptors.

   And this gives incredible weight to the practice of aromatherapy.  A skilled practitioner, utilizing the purest essential oils, may be able to find that magic match for you and help direct you toward healing.

     Another reason to avoid dismissing traditional healing modalities because they haven't received full scientific inquiry as yet.  Much of the old wisdom is now being proven valid.  A pleasant aromatherapy bath or massage has no ill side effects, is cost effective and maybe is your ticket to feeling great!