Tag Archives: Mind

Oy! Mega Chitta Vritti Day

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From the art of Umut Kebabci

Yep, check out that linguistic mash-up.  I probably should have thrown a huevo frommage! in there just to cover more bases. It’s that kind of day.  In my particular case, I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of very little sleep, some large and small worries weighing on my mind, and too much to do.  And, did I mention that I haven’t slept much recently?  Yeah.  So, there is that.  But, we all have days like this – the days when the mind is a whirling dervish of thoughts, pleasant and unpleasant, often focused on the past or future.  How does this serve us?

It’s easy enough to think that chitta vritti is all bad, but is it?  Many philosophers argue that the fact that we, as humans, think about (almost constantly) the past and future is a big part of our humanity.  I’ve never been positive that I buy the argument that animals never think in that way, because I don’t have a dog brain and thus I’m just not sure about it.  But, regardless of whether it is a unique feature of humanness, it’s certainly a characteristic of the human experience.  So, we shouldn’t be so quick to assume it serves us in no way.

The constant fluctuations of the mind are, in part, what help us to plan for situations in our lives – planning that is required for success in many instances.  They are also what allows us to experience our rehearsal of past events, through which we develop our understandings of the world, the self, and the self’s place in the world.  These understandings allow us to function in the world, as it is understood and created culturally and socially, on an everyday basis.  Through communication with others, and then our processing of that communication, we develop understandings of “obdurate reality” that create the potential for pragmatic efforts in coordination with those around us.  If we are unable to reflect on and understand the lines of distinction between objects and beings in our social world, we might be extremely enlightened, but we would probably have a heck of a time holding down a job.

And yet, as we learn in yoga philosophy, part of the practice of yoga is chitta vritti nirodhah, the cessation or control of the fluctuations of the mind.  Yoga calls upon us to be present in the moment, experiencing the sensations of the body without attaching to them, letting go of the distinctions between self and other, encouraging our understanding of the divinity and peace that is always already there.  This requires a stilling of the thoughts about what is and what should be, what will be and what has been.

Thus, like everything else, we seek a balance.  The chitta vritti help us to be “in the world,” but we cannot allow them to overtake our ability to be “in the moment.”

Namaste,

L

Fear and the Body/Mind in Yoga

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Fear is a complex emotion.  One of a handful of emotions said to be fully tied to our biological mammalian nature (in the sense of its existence, not in our particular fears), fear has a strong impact on our physical beings.  Fear protects us by preventing risk-taking behavior or providing us with the energy needed to manage danger.  Being in a fear producing  situation causes the body to release adrenalin in preparation for fight or flight.  Increased adrenalin production dilates the pupils, increases heart and breath rates, causes shaking, may produce nausea or headache, and so on.  Fear also affects us mentally, particularly when experienced over long periods.  It can cause mood swings, lack of self-efficacy, depression, inability to trust others, helplessness, loneliness, hostility, and more.

While fear serves a valuable purpose, in terms of our protection, it has drawbacks, as seen in some of the effects above.  Most of us have fears that are less about “real” dangers than imagined ones.  I am scared of spiders.  I love snakes and I have no problem with lizards or fish, or pretty much any animal with four or fewer legs.  Spiders sort of freak me out.  On an everyday basis, this is generally ok, but it does prevent me from going into situations where I think there might be many spiders (it took me quite a while to be convinced to try tent-camping, and I never want to go into the bug house at the zoo), and that is opportunity lost for very little “real” reason. Seriously, I wanted to put a spider picture on this post, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at them long enough to select one.

So, too, in a yoga practice fear can protect us from harm and also prevent us from growth.  When I started yoga, I was pretty sure that I would never ever ever (ever) do an headstand, handstand, or forearm stand.  Ever.  I felt pretty sure that I would fall on my head and break my neck.  This fear prevented me from really even trying to do inversions for quite a while.  At some point, I got past it and started doing them.  Then I had an “incident” in a hot yoga class that involved skidding across a carpet on my face during pinca myurasana.  Suddenly, I could not do inversions again.  Another few months were required to get past that fear and I was back to it.  A few weeks ago, I fell on some ice and managed to concuss myself and get whiplash.  Oops!  Back to the fear.  Three weeks later and I’m starting to recover my confidence in inversions, but I’m still working on it.

Fearing inversions in this way may be an obvious example in a  yoga practice, but I think fear effects practice in ways that are more subtle as well.  Since I started yoga, I have struggled with the jumps (forward and back) in vinyasa.  Jump-backs came more easily to me, but I’m still not so good at the jumps forward.  I’ve pondered and tried.  I’ve reviewed videos and read books.  And then, today in class, it really hit me.  My jump forward issue is because the forward jump requires lift.  It doesn’t work (thump!) if you just try to hop forward,  you have to actually jump up, as into an inversion, and then bring the legs forward.  With no wall behind me, I’m scared to jump up, so my forward jumps end up as sad little hops that don’t get my feet where they need to be.

It’s not just falling on the head that can be a fear in a yoga class.  Students might fear turning an ankle, injuring a knee, letting go too much in the hip flexor, stretching the neck far back – there are many physical fears that can come up in a yoga class.  In addition to these, there are emotional fears that can easily crop up in a class.  Fear of failure, fear of appearing vulnerable, fear of being open to others, etc.  (And I’m not even getting into abhinivesha – or fear of death – which may well be the root of most of the others).

So, what do we do about this in a yoga class, for ourselves or for our students?  We could say “don’t be afraid,” but it’s probably not that easy.  Identifying fear as the cause of some inabilities to do poses is a first step.  Then, affirming the normalcy of fear may help reduce additional discomfort of embarrassment.  Analyzing what the underlying fear is might help.  This may involve asking the fearful individual (self or other), “what is the very worst thing that could happen if you try this pose?”  Doing so allows us to meet each perceived potential outcome head on.  “I could break my head right off!”  “What are the odds you would really break your head right off?”  “Probably close to none, but I could really hurt my neck.”  This may provide a clue as to steps that can be taken to alleviate that concern to some degree, whether that is placing blankets under the head or providing support for a knee or moving to a corner for an inversion.

Like everything else, it’s a process.  We likely didn’t develop our specific fears in a day, or a week, or even a month, so we can’t expect them to disappear that fast.  But, allowing ourselves to acknowledge them and then attempting to identify ways to work through them in our practice may slowly whittle away at the fears that hold us back, or down.

Namaste,

L

You Got Some Candy in There?*

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I’ve believed in the mind/body connection for a long time.  It  makes emotional sense to me – when I feel better physically, my mood is better and when I feel better emotionally, my body feels better.  It makes philosophical sense to me – the human body/mind is a system; each part of the system affects and is affected by every other part.  It makes logical sense to me – the studies on the relationship between feelings of stress, production of Cortisol, and the immune system are pretty astounding.  So, when I heard my yoga teachers connecting the two, I wasn’t particularly resistant.  “If you believe you cannot do a pose, you will not be able to.”  Ok, yep, gotcha.  “Think of yourself in the pose and you can more easily get there.”  Okie dokie.  “Stop letting your mind get in your way.”  RIGHT!

But, when the various instructors I have had mentioned that some yoga poses, by creating an opening in an area of the body where emotions have been stored, can release a wave of emotional reaction, I just wasn’t getting it.  It wasn’t so much that I disagreed; I just didn’t feel it, so it wasn’t really making sense to me.  The only emotions I felt in yoga were happiness related to being there and doing the poses or frustration that I couldn’t.  That was pretty much it.  And then I started Yin.

The first class of yin that I went to, I pretty much spent the entire hour in a state of annoyance, so I wasn’t really considering how individual poses made me feel.  Over the next few sessions, as I found my way into more physical release in the poses, I was able to appreciate the differences in my state of mind.  After a few sessions, I began to notice that some poses made me feel a sense of panic.  At first it seemed that this was because they involved folding over, and I thought maybe I just wasn’t getting quite as much air – thus the panic feeling.  But, as the repertoire of poses increased along with my awareness of them, it became clear that it wasn’t the amount of folding, it was the extent and type of hip opening that was occurring.  Poses that really open my hips in a way that causes a stretch along the IT band area just make me feel panicked.  There is no logical reason for it.  I don’t fear that I’m actually going to hurt myself in Shoelace pose.  But, as soon as I move into it, I start to feel like I’m out of control.  There have been classes where I really was not sure that I could prevent myself from springing out of the pose and leaving the room due to the sense of panic and loss of control that arises.  What the heck?

Here is my armchair yogi interpretation of this.  I’m a person who likes to be orderly.  I don’t need everything to have a perfect logic fit (i.e. I’m ok with knowing that I love physics puzzles and also abstract painting, even though that may seem oppositional).  But, I like to have control of what is going on around me.  I’m getting better at dealing with uncertainty, and I would say that I have made some big strides in this over the last few years.  My friend Erica, who has seen me go from someone who could not stand camping because my kids might get dirty to someone who barely insists they bathe during several days of camping, would probably agree.  But, there are a lot of years in my past of trying to tightly control myself and my life.  Apparently, every time I felt a sense of panic or lack of control, I just “stuffed” it all into my hips.  Yep, they are packed full of panic – weird, huh?  So, now when I stretch and open them in that way, it seeps out and causes me to feel a little like I’m being deprived of all oxygen.

I would guess that not everyone is stuffing their lack of control into their hips.  Perhaps you have been putting your sadness in your abdominal muscles (yeah, unpack that idea!).  Maybe you have been putting your anger in your shoulders.  Maybe your hips have something else in them – fear or even joy.  The next time you feel an emotion arising unexpectedly that seems to be unconnected to what is going on at that moment, take some time to observe whats going on with your body.  What are you releasing?  Have you got some candy in there?

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* This post title refers to a joke between some of my “mom friends” and I.  Back when our children were toddlers, and in the phase where they just wouldn’t stop following mommy around for 2 minutes, we used to laugh about the things they would yell through the bathroom door when we were inside .  One of those included, “hey! You got some candy in there?”