I am down south with my parents, playing hooky from my yoga responsibilities up North. Each Spring I unwind on a beautiful golf course and take time to experiment with my own yoga practice. Last week he came here and I luxuriated in both a liberating yoga class and a groovy Kirtan that she led on separate evenings. I felt I had returned to the early 70’s! He encouraged us to fool around with our breath, our postures, and our voices. The instruction that stuck in my head was to practice pranayama until our minds became weightless before practicing asana.

This week I have been referring to her manual while making some of her practices my own. Her Kirtan chanting seems to have influenced her noisy breathing techniques and her meditations on vibrations. As I teach many chair yoga classes, I believe that vocalizations are a wonderful way to vibrate all the cells in our bodies and to relax our nervous systems. It’s a good thing my father is losing some of his hearing, or I might weird him out as I huff, puff, and chant before breakfast!

He advocates the Anusara principals of alignment in Asana practice, so I have been bringing them to my awareness to see if they bring a greater sense of lightness to my postures. She lists them in her manual, but I will summarize them here as well:
1) Hug the muscles towards the bone to activate muscular energy and to create a flow of energy from the extremities towards the hara or body core. Allow prana to simultaneously flow outwards. With practice and awareness, we are able to increase both the collection and the radiation of Universal Energy through our bodies.
2) Hug the mid-line, pulling the muscles towards the center of the body. Be aware of the left and right sides of the body coming together, as in prayer pose , Mountain, or Warrior II. The legs may also pull together, forward and back, in lunging postures. As the extremities pull together, the spine may lift and feel lighter.
3) Melt the Heart. The shoulder blades slide closer together and down the back when you lift the shoulders slightly and round them gently backwards. Balance the slight inward rotation of the shoulder blades by puffing out the kidneys.
4) Inner Spiral. When you spiral the thighs inwards, the sit bones widen and allow you to deepen you standing poses. To counteract the rotation of the thighs, drop your tailbone. In my experience, thinking of elongating the big toes while bending forward (standing or seated) prevents the shins and feet from pronating.
Note: Anusara instructs us to “hug”, rather than to grasp in a death grip or to hold in a limp fish handshake.

So how does yoga help my golf game? As a centering technique, he guided us in a visual practice to quiet our eyes.We rubbed our hands together and cupped them over our eyeballs, gazing with open eyes as if focusing two miles off into the distance. Our eyes naturally move when we search our thoughts or memories, so that stilling our eyes helps us calm our active minds. This is a practical technique for golf as well. How often have you heard, “don’t think, just swing through the ball?” I try to still my eyes on a blade of grass so that my mind can get out of the way of my body’s experience and wisdom. When the mind is less invested in the shot, it seems less critical of the outcome. What a relief! Take time instead to notice the magnolias, the ospreys, the marsh, and the magnificent cloud formations.

One of the reasons I am drawn to the R.C. Gorman sculpure I feature throughout this blog is her apparent balance between effort, focus, and relaxation. Notice the upward lift of her torso in the “About me” photo in contrast to her limp foot in the featured photo above.
Science continues to reaffirm what the yogis have said for centuries. Mental stress and physical tension make us ill. Neuroscience is only beginning to teach us about the relationships between our brains and our bodies, but all the research points to the need to practice relaxation for our physical, mental, and spiritual health. I read Brain Rules, by Dr. John J. Medina on the plane on my way back across the continent last week. Dr. Medina’s research focuses on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He inquires into how the mind reacts to and organizes information and has a particular interest in the ways brain sciences may improve the process of teaching our children and the organization of our work places. His chapters on the need for exercise and sleep to combat the debilitating effects of stress reinforce ancient yoga prescriptions.

How do we achieve relaxation? Physical relaxation is a learned response that must be practiced. Initially we learn to distinguish tense and relaxed muscles by purposely tensing and releasing our bodies. In yoga we rotate our joints to increase the flow of synovial fluid, a transparent, viscid lubricant secreted by the membrane of an articulation, bursa, or tendon sheath. We stretch forward, back, and side to side to elongate and contract opposing muscles as well as to feel the sensations of tension and release. We twist both to stretch and to “squeeze and soak” our internal organs, compressing and releasing them to force an exchange of stagnant blood with a fresh supply. Meditation is a tool for becoming familiar with our mental states. Once we become aware of the background noise of our habitual anxieties, anger, fear, and desire we can loosen their grip on our minds and focus instead on the realities of our relationships and situations in the present moment. As we become more familiar with the felt sense of relaxation or release we can be more aware of tension creeping into our bodies and minds throughout our day and consciously let go more easily. While more aware of my stresses, I’m still working on letting go on a daily or even hourly basis.

I begin this week’s class with a brief meditation on the sound of a rain stick followed by a quieting poem. She begins with the words, Join your hands gently. I have memorized her poem and find it helpful to literally place my hands together at intervals during the day to remind myself to let go. When my hands are joined I can’t type, feed myself, play with my iphone, or otherwise distract myself. In the time it takes to recite her words, I feel a shift in my energy. To physically warm up in this class I use my own version of Ken Cohen’s Qigong series, 8 Brocades (a video), but I recommend following along with his video. His book, The Way of Qigong, is a classic introduction to the Chinese energy healing technique. Yesterday the monthly Kirtan at Watering Pond was led by Eddy Nataraj and I found his style so gentle and relaxing that I chose his CD to accompany the class. His MySpace site is full of videos and music.