Yoga and Traumatic Brain Injury

A few months ago I got a call from Joe Barrett, the Day Program coordinator at Hind’s Farm, a facility that helps those with traumatic brain injuries.

“I have been doing yoga for 8 years and I know how helpful it has been for me,” he said. “I would like someone to come here and teach yoga to the members. Do you know anyone who could volunteer?”

So I put out the question to the current students in the Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation Program and Ann Mundy responded.

“I’m going there to meet the clients and start teaching next Wednesday,” she wrote me. “They all have brain injuries, and some physical disabilities. One is a paraplegic in a wheelchair, 3 use canes, others are physically normal – so quite a range in one class. I will definitely have to study up on adaptive yoga!”

And she did. She did her homework, got her notes together and got to it in early September.

Here’s Ann at Hind’s Farm:

And here she is teaching one of the clients:

Class also has included some basic walking assistance:

“These people have very little help with physical movement.” Ann told me. “They don’t even have a physical therapist.” So not only are they benefiting from the adapted yoga postures and breathing practices Ann has been teaching, but also from the fact that they are receiving some special care and attention.

On Friday morning, I received this phone call:

“Hello Ms. Weber, This is Joe Barrett from Hind’s Farm. Ann Mundy has been volunteering with us on Wednesdays to teach yoga to our members, who all have traumatic brain injuries. It has been incredibly challenging. This is no cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination. But we love her energy, her enthusiasm, and the fortitude with which she comes to each program in giving the best that she has to offer. And we are seeing the benefits to our members in terms of the camaradarie, the relationship building and the health focused-ness of many of them. So I thank you very much for all the work you are doing training yoga teachers – it is showing in one of your students, Ann. You have a great day.”

Kudos to Ann! You are a beacon of light – thank you for bringing the gift of yoga to those who need it so much.

7 Ways to Create A Meditation Practice

Here are 7 tips to help you establish a meditation practice.

1. Practice at the same time in the same place – both am and pm. Over time this creates a groove in your biorhythms and in the space/time continuum so that when 7 am and 6 pm (or whatever times you’ve chosen) roll around you are naturally drawn to meditate.

2. Practice on a light stomach – don’t chow down before meditation, it just draws your attention to your third chakra. At the same time, an empty tummy can have a similarly distracting effect. When I was at an ashram in India the nuns would have a little snack (they quaintly called it “tiffin”) at around 5 pm before their meditation.

3. Splash water on your face, forearms and hands, and feet before your meditate. Lots of nerves that get overheated in these areas. It’s amazing how a little water can calm them down, calm you down so you can focus.

4. Use a wool or cotton blanket (if you don’t have either of those, a tiger skin will do There’s something about sitting on natural fibers when you’re meditating. It gives you a better electromagnetic connection to the earth. Being as Bengal tigers are on the endangered species list, I wouldn’t go trying to procure a skin. But if you happen to find one at yard sale, please let me know.

5. Clear your mind. Use the 6-3-6-3 breath practice at the beginning of your meditation practice for a few minutes to help you settle the crazy monkeys down. They don’t like counting, it makes them really bored.

6. Mantra – a two syllable Sanskrit mantra works best, a mantra that has been vibrated by a teacher is even better.

7. Sing! If your monkeys are still jumping around or if you know breath counting isn’t going to placate them in the least, try some kirtan. If you play an instrument, great. If not, use your favorite kirtan artists tunes. You can browse around Youtube to find some good kirtans that you resonate with. I like Jai Uttal: http://jaiuttal.com/ a lot. There are lots of other artists who are great. Singing also stimulates your vagus nerve – the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system which means it helps relax you into meditation. And that repetition that you get through singing mantra can really help kick the monkeys out. Not only that, but the meanings of the mantras are truly beautiful and elevating. When you really feel like you can’t meditate at all, singing an be a great alternative.

The Transformative Power of Offering and Gratitude

When I was in India in 1995, I spent time at a women’s ashram in Kolkata. The head nun there was round and lively. She had many administrative duties including acting as a liaison to the nearby men’s ashram and coordinating the community service projects. But she also took time to take care of the younger nuns. She regarded each of them as her direct responsibility – as if they were her younger sisters. At night, the nuns would come to her room to rub her feet, cook for her and generally make a fuss over her just to be close to her. I never heard anyone say anything negative about her. What they would talk about was what special sweets they were going to buy for her or how they were going to wash her saris or clean her room.

It was a beautiful environment – not without its dramas of course, but still, a sweet family feeling was very palpable in the place. The younger nuns clearly devoted themselves to this woman. I was just a guest so I didn’t really have much interaction with her, but then one evening, a few days before I was going to leave, a young nun came and found me.

“Didi said you must come, you must come to her room for dinner tonight.” What an honor, I thought, to be invited to have dinner with this special woman. “What should I bring?” I asked. “Nothing, nothing,” she said closing her eyes and sweeping my question away with her hands, “You simply come.”

So that evening I did my meditation and then put on a sari and went to Didi’s room for our dinner together. When I got there, Didi was sitting on a low stool on the floor flipping chapattis in her hands and cooking them over a stove on the floor. “Come, come!” she motioned. She pulled up a chair and gave me a plate. “Here, you start with this.” She gave me some eggplant curry and a hot chapatti.

“But Didi,” I protested, “I can’t eat without you!” By Indian standards, with someone of Didi’s stature, the thought of eating by myself while she was cooking for me, was horrifyingly rude – and not at all what I was expecting.

What I assumed is that we would be having dinner together – possibly cooked by a younger nun – and we would discuss highly philosophical yogic subjects and share our common love for the grandeur of the practice, blah, blah, blah.

Nope, she was adamant. And I was put in the awkward position of being served by one of the most devoted and respected spiritual women I’ve ever encountered. I had to release all my preconceived notions and accept the situation. The food was delicious. I loosened up a little and, despite my embarrassment, managed to enjoy it. Didi continued to flip chapattis, stir vegetables and grind up spices while telling me magical stories about her guru, punctuated here and there with a hearty laugh or a few bars of kirtan.

It’s not uncommon in India to hold the belief that the food you eat is vibrated by the energy of the person who prepares it for you. Didi whipped up some okra and tomatoes and gave me another chapatti. Not only was the food delicious, it was drenched in the love of a remarkable person and by eating it, I was being offered a taste of how it feels to be able to love that much.

Didi’s humility filled me with gratitude. Not so much because she was nice and she fed me some great food, but because she taught me a timeless lesson that day – feed people often and with love. Food is the most basic way, but if not food, then tea, if not tea, then words. Acknowledging someone with an offering is a powerful, transformative practice.

Think about how you feel when you put your heart into making a meal for your child or spouse or parents or friends. Then think about how you feel when they say, “This is delicious! Thank you.” What if we treated everyone with that same reverent love?

Offering is a two way street and the gratitude that follows the offering is also a two way street. Through the offering a relationship deepens, through the gratitude the relationship flowers. Offering and gratitude move us, in a very practical way, towards oneness.

A Parade of Archetypes

My son had some trouble this morning deciding who to be for the school Halloween party. He contemplated the Target-bought Snow Trooper costume and also a homemade Yoda outfit with green felt ears. He wanted to be Darth Vader for a few moments, but he couldn’t find anything that would serve as a helmet. In the end he decided on his trusty Policeman uniform – which is his favorite persona – he often puts it on when he gets home from school and then rides his bike around threatening the neighbors with tickets.

“The police uniform is my favorite one mom,” he said. “Because I can bring my flashlight and billyclub and handcuffs and tickets, too.” Snow Trooper was a close second but lost because the school does not approve of galactic laser guns.

Ah, Halloween. What a great time for projection.

Children love, and are generally not ashamed, to pull their hopes, fears and desires out of their psyches and play them out, see what they feel like, integrate them back into the personalities they are developing.

The gore-fest that Halloween has become in recent years is a troubling display of cultural psychic damage. But at least it is played out. As my psychologist friend likes to say about violent movies, “At least those people are just watching them and not acting on them!” Well, most people, but there are studies linking violent video games with violent behavior.

Violent play is a developmental stage of the second chakra. Deep down in the dark waters of the second chakra lurks a horrifying crocodile-monster waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack! If you make friends with him you integrate the shadow, the dark side of yourself. If you don’t, he stays out there ready to terrify you at any turn with your darkest urges and desires. A fascination with horror films and gorey Halloween costumes are glaring examples of second chakra imbalance – appropriate if you are a developing 5 year old boy – disconcerting if you are a grown up.

So as the energy around the annual celebration of archetypes starts to rev up and I see people walking around in costumes and wigs, I feel inspired to write about the archetypal aspects of yoga poses – which could be thought of as kind of costumes to put on in order to create different feelings and experiences.

The Hero is one of Carl Jung’s dominant archetypes and I think the warrior poses help us to embody this energy. We have four different warriors (if you include reverse warrior) – four distinct ways to experience that energy. When I do warrior poses I experience the activation of the archetypal warrior within.

Virasana is the pose that’s actually called “Hero.” But this pose, rather than being active, activates the energy of deep self control and introspection – qualities a true warrior must cultivate.

The Sage is another important archetype recognized by Jung. And there are so many sage poses in yoga – Matsyendrasana, Bharadvaja, Vishvamitra, Vashishta, Koundinya, Ashtabakra – just to name a few. In the sage poses I’m reminded of the great spiritual thinkers and teachers who gave these poses – or for whom these poses were named. Here’s an interesting article by Richard Rosen on Asana Names and Hindu Gods and Sages.

Ashtabakra for example overcame a severe scoliotic deformity to become a great tantric master. The pose requires strength, flexibility and the willingness to step out of your comfort zone.

Vashishta was a traveler. He carried great secrets back and forth across the mountains from the Indian and Chinese masters. Vashishta’sana is a pose that celebrates movement and the exhilaration of overcoming of tremendous obstacles.

(probably not the best place to try this one out)

Matsyendra was the founder of Hatha yoga and Matsyendra’sana was one of the first poses ever written down – it’s in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. It’s a pose that creates spiralic waves of prana which fortify the ida and pingala – the subtle energy streams that helix up our core, preparing the way for the kundalini. Matsyendra developed the asanas of Hatha Yoga to pave the way for the ascension of the spiritual energy – his pose, a harmonious song to the spine, is one of the most important ones for yogis seeking enlightment.

When our bodies assume the shapes of these poses we try on their energy. It’s like my son trying on different costumes. Different asanas call up different vibrations, different universal, archetypal energies within us. I also believe that the asanas are encoded, much like mantras, with the vibration of the teacher who gives them.

And that means everyone who had their hand in passing on that asana from your fresh-faced teacher down the street, to her teacher who studied with someone in California, to her teacher from Kolkata, who maybe studied with a master in Rishikesh. In all that transference of teaching, things get altered in translation, hopefully for the better, sometimes not.

Which is one of the reasons that you can go to a yoga class and have it feel like a mediocre aerobic workout, or like the most spiritual, mind-blowing ritual you ever experienced – and everything in between.

Happy Halloween – enjoy the parade of archetypes!

Singing at a Nursing Home

Saturday afternoon I went with the students from the Subtle Yoga Training and Personal Transformation Program at Community Yoga to a nursing home near Davidson, NC. The eighth weekend of the program is about seva (selfless service) which is an essential part of the yoga practice. And so as part of the program, we do a service project together.

Amy, the owner of Community Yoga, had called up this home and asked if we could come by and visit with the residents. We thought we might paint some finger nails, chat a bit, sing a song or two, rub some shoulders, do a little sweeping – or be useful in whatever way the staff thought we could.

It’s not necessarily an easy thing – a bunch of uninvited do-gooders want to come to our nursing home – why would people training to be yoga teachers want to come and visit with our residents? The staff was a bit baffled and didn’t really know what to tell us to do. But they said come anyway – it’ll be nice for the residents to have some company.

A couple of the students who lived locally commented that they had no idea there was a nursing home in that area – they had driven by it before and thought it was just an industrial complex.

But behind the warehouses was a small brick building. We walked into a long corridor and received a few curious looks from residents. I had thought it was a nursing home for the elderly, but actually there were a lot of young people too. We found out the facility was actually a state run home for people who are mentally impaired and can not care for themselves.

I brought my guitar with me in case anyone wanted to sing something - but I wasn’t really prepared for a any kind of concert and we really had no idea what we were supposed to do.

Someone pointed us to the “Activities Room” – an bare linoleum-floored square space with a few straight backed metal chairs. I sat down and started to strum a few chords. The students started asking residents if they’d like to join us and a few older women cautiously came in and sat down. Somebody asked for “This Little Light of Mine” and so we sang it. A few more residents showed up. Somebody asked for “Michael Row Your Boat A-Shore” so we sang that. The rooms started filling up.

Retha, a resident, sang a few gospel songs and others joined in. Another resident sang, “Beulah Land.” Someone wanted “Kumbaya” so we whipped that one out. Amy suggested the Music Together Hello Song, which includes repeating everyone’s name in the room – faces lit up when we sang hello to each person individually – students and residents.

Then Rose, one of the students, jumped in the middle of the room and said, “Okay, now it’s time for the hokey-pokey!” And we did it, from chairs or standing up, giggling at ourselves.

The singing and laughter went on for more than an hour – eventually some of the staff joined us too. We left with a lot of hugs and smiles. A resident approached Rose and said, “We’ve never had anything like this before. Can you come back next week?”

I left with a happy/sad heart and some questions.

Why in my busy life do I not take more time for singing “She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain”? What does being with mentally impaired people bring up for me? My own fears of aging and/or losing my mental faculties? What does it mean to be in an institution? What does it mean to make an effort to connect? What does it mean to sing a song and do a dance and laugh a little?

Bobbi, one of the students in the program sent me a Hafiz poem – here’s my favorite line:

Now, sweet one, Be Wise. Cast all your votes for Dancing!

The Long Salutation – Activating Your Child’s Pose

Child’s Pose is a treat.

It’s relaxing, it opens your hips, it calms your mind. But you can “activate” this pose – catalyze its benefits – if you repeat it. And that’s what Diirgha Pranam is essentially – an activated child’s pose.

Diirgha Pranam means “the long salutation.” It’s a pose that naturally leads to pratyahara, or the internalization of awareness. Unlike child’s pose, where you stay still, diirgha pranam requires movement. Through this movement you develop core strength. This strengthening, especially of the transverse abdominis, or deepest abdominal muscle layer, is very beneficial for various kinds of menstrual problems and discomfort.

Diirgha Pranam is also beneficial for digestive problems and is an excellent pose for balancing women’s hormones.

And while I enjoy knowing that this pose is so useful for so many physical issues, my favorite part of the pose is the way that it cultivates a sense of peace, surrender and release. Yoga is a practice. It works if you do it…again and again. With this pose you get to come to that place of release several times in a row. It’s a chance to embody the idea of letting go and to etch that idea into your nervous system.

Here’s what it looks like:
                       

Here’s how to do it:

1. Kneel down, and sit back on the heels with your toes tucked under.
2. Bring your palms together at your heart cakra.
3. Inhale and extend your arms upward, keeping them close to your ears.
4. Exhale as you bend forward stretching your arms out in front of you and bringing your third eye to the floor. Keep your palms together. Don’t lift your hips off your heels.
5. Release your exhale and continue holding it for up to 8 seconds.
6. When you’re ready, inhale back up keeping your arms near your ears.
7. Exhale and allow your arms to release, sweep out to the sides and circle back to your heart.
8. Repeat 8 times.

Modifications:

1. Start by placing the hands on the upper thighs, and then slide them down to the floor beside the knees, as in a Muslim prayer position.
2. For stiff toes, place the round folded edge of a blanket under the balls of the feet while the toes touch the floor.

Enjoy!

Viva Las Vagus Nerve

A corny title – but a cool nerve. The 10th of the cranial nerves, it is often called the “Nerve of compassion” because when it’s active, it helps create the  “warm-fuzzies” that we feel in our chest when we get a hug or are moved by a chick-flick.

The vagus nerve is really a bundle of nerves that originates at the top of the spinal cord and enervates all sorts of organs. Here’s a picture:

(Peter Jurek, www.peterjurek.com)

That first little offshoot stimulates certain muscles in the vocal chamber, facilitating communication. The fourth reduces heart rate and there’s some new scientific findings that are suggesting that the vagus nerve might be closely connected to receptor networks for oxytocin – the feel good hormone/neurotransmitter of parenthood, hugs and bonding.

You can see from this diagram that the vagus nerve branches off to everything from the neck down to the colon. Its fibers are parasympathetic – the relaxing side of the nervous system (that’s somewhat simplistic, but, in general, a useful, lay person’s way to understand the nervous system is sympathetic = fight or flight, parasympathetic = rest and digest). So the vagus nerve can be related to heart rate, digestion and even skeletal muscles.

Pretty easy to see how even the simplest yoga routine would stimulate lots of branches of this nerve. For years I have heard teachers talk about how yoga benefits the vagus nerve – from shoulderstand and down dog to chanting and pranayama – Yoga is a virtual celebration of the vagus nerve – a practice of viva las vagus!

But here’s something even cooler – the research that Dacher Ketlner, director of the Social Interaction Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley is doing shows that stimulating that vagus nerve is not only good for you – it’s good for the planet!

“Our research and that of other scientists suggest that activation of the vagus nerve is associated with feelings of caretaking and the ethical intuition that humans from different social groups (even adversarial ones) share a common humanity. People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism – compassion, gratitude, love and happiness.”

There you go. Do it for love.

Focus on the Peaceful and the Light

I’ve blogged about this sutra before, but it’s such a gem that I want to come back to it – especially because Deepavali starts today (actually the most important night I am told is Saturday (see yesterday’s blog)).

Vishoka va jyotishmati (Yoga Sutra 1.36)

It means, “Stabilize the mind by focusing on that which is peaceful and light.” Some people translate it as: “Stabilize the mind, and then focus on that which is light” or “Get rid of unhappiness and, at the same time, see that your mind is light.”

For me the instruction from Patanjali to focus on the light is not much different from the simple instruction that my mother used to give me when I was a child. Be positive. One of my students, who teaches about brain health and aging, has a license plate that says: ATI2D – it’s all about attitude she told me. Everything.

But how do you get a good attitude? That’s an age-old question. Aren’t some people born pessimists and others born optimists? How do we change our attitude if we happen to fall in the former category?

For starters there’s meditation - just clearing time in your day – especially first thing in the morning, to assess and maybe reset your attitude, can work wonders. And don’t get me wrong – this isn’t about being “happy and nice” all the time – human beings have a wide spectrum of emotions that are there for a reason – to be experienced. They are essential for our growth.

But when the mind is destabilized by these emotions – then we are called to find balance. And that’s where the light comes in. And the great thing about yoga is that the ancient sages fully understood that each person finds peaceful light in their own way. Yoga is a spiritual tradition – not a religion. It is often associated with devotional Shaivism or Vaeshnavism, but that’s just because it was cultivated in India. Whatever spiritual or religious tradition speaks to you personally, can provide you with the light and the peace.

So try this when you are feeling the need to stabilize your mind. Stop, go some place where you can be alone, still and quiet. Watch your breath for a minute or two and then spend some time with that entity, deity or energy that fills you with peace and light. Relate to that being. Notice it and talk to it. Take 5 minutes to do this. Finish by placing your hands together at your heart in the offering of salutations to that being. And then notice how your mind is.

BTW, yoga is a practice. Which means the more you do it, the better it works.

Diipavalii, Deepavali, or Diwali – The Festival of Lights!

Diipavalii is almost here. It is an important holiday in India. It is a five day celebration which falls on the darkest nights of the year, coming up this weekend. Either Saturday or Sunday, depending on where you are on the planet and which calendar you’re following (Ay! trying to figure that out makes my head hurt, so I’ll go with the Sunday, Oct. 18 date) is the centerpiece of the holiday

When I first heard about this holiday I was like, wait a minute - the darkest night is December 21 - the winter solstice, duh… I mean I know India dances to its own tune and everything, but they’re off by more than 2 months!

No grasshopper, that is the longest night, not the darkest. The darkest night comes on the new moon of the month of Karttika (which I guess is the India equivalent of October).

The festival is accompanied by lots of gift-giving, fire cracker exploding, food eating, deity worshipping, loud music playing and general merrymaking. Nobody knows how to put on a celebration like the Indians. But the central point of the holiday is what is important – this is the darkest night, it won’t get any darker. But the light is coming. With the longest night you can think, oh well, it’s long, but I can handle it, it’s just a matter of time and it’ll be over.

When I was in the hospital in labor with my son I kept thinking, yeah, this hurts, but it can’t last very long. I can do anything for a few hours. Not that the pain was anything to celebrate, but I knew that it was something with a definite time limit.

But darkness is something different. It is psychological. It’s no accident that Carl Jung labeled the hidden, problematic part of ourselves the “shadow.” Or that we use the word “dark” to describe something inherently evil or insidious.

But Diipavalii is a hopeful, joyous occasion because the culture understands the central truth of their favorite yoga text, the Bhagavad Giita: dharma or light, always triumps over darkness. Vidya always triumphs over avidya.

This is perhaps the most important truth we could ever hold to in life – the good guys always win. Maybe not in the short term, but always in the long run. There is no reality in pessimism or cynicism – they are just reflections of avidya. Truth always prevails.

Happy Diipavalii – I hope you do something joyful!

Yoga Chin Hazards

Ever see that swan dive into forward fold with the chin leading the way? The head looks kind of like this all the way down:

Extension of the neck can be just fine if it’s done with extension of the thoracic spine (upper back). But when it’s done when the thoracic spine is in flexion (a rounded back, or a forward fold), you could be getting yourself into trouble. Especially if it’s a repeated practice. Like doing sun salutation forward folds continually with the head in extension or for that matter, spending a lot of time on cat-cow.

Cat-cow? That harmless little spinal warm up? How could that be a problem? Well, the thing is, if you do it every day and take your neck into extension while the upper back stays in flexion, you cultivate a maladaptive movement pattern that can lead you, perhaps years later, to serious neck trouble.

The easy way out of future neck issues is this – let your neck move with your upper back. Whenever you take your head back, make sure your shoulderblades are retracting (moving towards each other), your upper arms bones are externally rotating (turning outwards not inwards) and you feel a stretch in your chest. Feel your neck – does it feel crunchy or squished in the back – even in extension your neck should feel long and free.

Gary Kraftsow’s “uncat-cow” is a great alternative to cat-cow and promotes a better movement pattern.