An Exercise in Awareness
By Laura Mills
For several years I made a habit of drinking one diet soda every afternoon. It was my pick-me-up, my simple indulgence in the middle of the day to add a little flavor to the hours that followed. I enjoyed diet soda and never considered my one daily can a terribly unhealthy habit. But what bothered me is that I often pulled one out of the fridge just because the clock said 4:00 pm. I didn’t contemplate whether I wanted it or not; it was just something I had gotten used to doing.
Completely eliminating my afternoon pick-me-up just left me irritated, so to remedy the situation I sought a more gentle approach and switched from diet soda to something less automatic: tea. I had always kept a few varieties of tea on hand, but now I stocked up. I reasoned that tea requires intention, that I would never be able to pull a hot, ready-to-drink cup out of the cabinet at 4:00 pm or any other time. I would instead have to gather the tea-making items, wait at least a few minutes for the water to boil, and then wait another few minutes for the tea to brew. In other words, I would have to REALLY want that tea.
So far, my new approach is working well. I still keep a few emergency sodas in the fridge and pull one out every now and then, but I’m noticing that the more I drink tea the more I enjoy it. In addition to tea’s flavor and warmth, I appreciate the experience of consciously choosing my afternoon pick-me-up, another small way of savoring even the simplest moments.
EMOTIONAL SPLINTERS, PIMPLES AND HANGNAILS
Have you ever had a hangnail? What about a pimple? A splinter?
This weekend I broke a nail. Tragic!! Oooh the pain, the challenge, the distraction! Yeah, I know its not that big a deal. But at the time it hurt. But to add insult to injury as life has a sense of humor, long past being a teenager I still get pimples. Terrible stuff. And that too, if I let it, creates a little drama inside my head. But enough about me, what about you? Do you lets little things like pimples, broken nails, splinters fully absorb all your attention?
It's funny that way isn't it? Here are these small inconveniences and yet we can get totally distracted where everything else seems to lose significance. All we think about is that one small thing!
One of my favorite writings puts it like this, "Negative emotions are like splinters. They pierce our consciousness grab hold of our minds and consume our thoughts to the point that we can lose sight of our desire for contentment compassion and deeper awareness. Most of us can recall the times we have felt hurt or angered by harsh words or actions of others and how we have held on to our pain processing it over and over in our minds like a never ending one sided argument. We often hold on to these emotional splinters for weeks months and even years. Holding onto negative thoughts always increases our pain, causing us to be distracted, dysfunctional and even depressed."
So what are your emotional broken nails? Do you have emotional splinters overriding your life right now? I'll tell you day 1 of broken nail my mind kept going back to it, I saw this was a problem and by day 2 I was already able to retrain my mind to be more present, by day 3 I only thought about my broken nail 4 times, by day 4 I only let it absorb my attention twice. You see yoga is for the mind. There is an answer to our emotional hangnails. Just like getting a splinter out of the body, once we decide we don't want to replay the negative or hurtful thoughts over and over can we begin to heal.
And yoga does heal. It has healed me, it has healed hundreds of students I've seen through the years, it has healed the teacher trainees I've had the privilege of working with for 9 sessions. Yoga can offer you healing too. This philosophy comes from the Yoga Sutras, Chapter 2.33 Pratipaksha Bhavana. Where when we are faced with something hurtful we cultivate an elevated attitude, we move our mind away from the petty distraction and dramas. In other words WE DO NOT FREAK OUT. Do not Panic. All the stuff that is flying around outside us we call life is just external agitation. Yoga helps us to quiet the mind through concentrated focus on breath, movement, sensation to move away from the external pimples and to the place deep inside our hearts where peace always exists. Where there is no drama.
This comes as a result in great part simply by bringing awareness to the small stuff and often just laughing at ourselves and our humanness and what silly creatures we are. We learn to shift from a splinter to the important experiences of loving ourselves, loving others, living honestly and with total commitment to our overall happiness.
"Any of us in deep hurt know that shifting our feelings is much easier said than done. We actually become pyschologically and nuerologically habituated to sharp toxic emotions to that point we we often find ourselves over-responding making the tiniest splinter of perceived negative experience feel like shrapnel piercing our hearts. As we perpetuate this response it becomes such an ingrained habit that we often feel unable to control our behavior." So the firs step to healing your emotional broken nails is to know it is possible to change the habits of your mind. Every yoga class you experience will help you do that. And through this process of practice "we can transform our splinters to salve, anger into compassion, hate into love, fear into courage and yes even pain into joy!" Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia
Join me with alchemy tours in 2011 www.alchemytours.com
SUSTAINING WEIGHT LOSS AND YOGA
JANUARY 24, 2010: The healthy link between yoga and weight loss is not so much only about normalizing weight as much as it is about sustaining weight loss. But first yes, one of the most effective and ancient ways of promoting health and effecting transformation is to practice yoga, especially poses, breathing and meditation. Increasing research in the fields of health and well being indicate that the stress-reducing effects of yoga practice are significant and powerful in normalizing WEIGHT. And as Judith Lasater writes, “We no longer have a choice about including practices in our daily lives that create health and spiritual growth. If we want a world worth living in today, as well as one worth leaving to future generations, we must take responsibility to create health in our lives, as well as to support others as they choose healthier lives for themselves. It is up to each of each of us to lovingly transform the world simply by first transforming ourselves.”
Through the practice of yoga, we can begin to feel connected to ourselves, to our body’s rhythm, our breath, and our emotions. We can tune into how we feel about ourselves and to what degree our eating is emotionally based. According to studies the number 1 &2 reasons for weight gain is emotional stress and habit. And then once we’ve gained the extra weight we get dissatisified which may develop elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn ENCOURAGES stress-related eating (known by scientists as FOOD-SEEKING BEHAVIOR). Which results in more weight gain which may fuel more stress and stress–related eating. Gosh that’s the pattern? Yup.
I hope this class helped to make sense of some things. And that you will join me again week after week to maintain this awareness and learn to be the best YOU possible! With love in all ways, Silvia
So how does the Yoga work? Here’s a quick summary we talked about in class:
- Yoga burns calories by doing poses and breathing techniques which make metabolism more efficient (food + Oxygen = fuel)
- Yoga is proven to fight stress (and lower cortisol levels). Cortisol makes conversion of calories into fat (especially fat in the abdomen) more efficient.
- Yoga helps us see clearly. Before you can change something you have to acknowledge it for what it is which can be a problem (Study 1992 New England Journal of Medicine study looked at obsese people who considered themselves resistent to diets they told doc’s they exercised and limited calories but when asked to keep a food journal the patients had on average underestimated their food intake by 47% and overestimated their exercise 51% (They were tricked by their own minds)
- Patterns (samskaras) – the behavior grooves we dig through repeated actions. Many people who overeat are on autopilot. Yoga helps us be mindful of the moment, which helps us notice and savor our food instead of gulping it down.
- Also the mindfulness helps us realize when we are not hungry but simply eating out of habit or emotional neediness.
- Consider this (relapse rate on most diets is 100%). If you lose one ounce/day that’s almost half a pound/week which = 23 pounds in a year. To lose an ounce/day you’ve only got to burn about 250 calories more than you take in. (Breath how it works)
- Many people view food as the enemy. Yoga view of food is that it is a manifestation of the divine, a gift from God. In the Upanishads, food is equated with the divine force in the universe, Yoga would say food is one of life’s great pleasures.
LET ME SEE THE CHANGE I NEED SAMSKARAS
As is written in the Secret Power of Yoga my favorite translation of the Yoga Sutras, "our thoughts and feelings form these clusters of habitual patterns, tendencies and potentialities called Samskaras. These Samskaras accrue by the constant churning of our thoughts and emotions. Whenever any thought or feeling is encountered it is easily fed into one of these patterns. Then our habits and patterns become set. The pattern of HABIT or samskara is difficult to change, as our consciousness is often unable to reconfigure the obvious."
You see our thoughts (all 60,000 per day) are trained by habit to flow in predictable patterns. We are tuned out to most of these habits, especially the Unhealthy ones. The practice of yoga inspires us to recognize who we really are, our true selves and we begin to see our "MINDLESS HABITS" (Samskaras). We then begin making more conscious choices. It is like we wake up. Chapter 1.50 When experiencing the absolute true knowledge all previous Samskaras are left behind and new ones are prevented from sprouting.
In the yogic model, two reasons exist for remaining stuck in negative emotions or unhealthy actions:
- The first is samskaras, or karmic knots, that develop over time.
- The second is a lack of prana, or vital life force, oxygen in our bodies.
How yoga can help:
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Releases emotions/stress locked in the body.
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Brings in more oxygen/prana or life-force. (For instance we learn when we hold our breath)
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Balances the brain.
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Calms the mind and develops the “witness” - we see our thought pattern or physical habit.
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Helps us reconnect, become more awake or conscious.
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According to Stephen Cope, MSW, LICSW, a psychotherapist and author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam, 1999), hatha yoga's postures improve mood by moving energy through places in the body where feelings of grief, stress, worry or anger are stored. "Hatha yoga is an accessible form of learning self-soothing," he says. "These blocked feelings can be released very quickly, [creating a] regular, systemic experience of well-being."
GRATITUDE HABIT
JULY 14, 2009: As Gratitude is something which none of us can give too much I wanted to tell you how thankful I am for you sharing your time with me by coming to class. Your support encourages me to work even harder at serving you better. I really want to offer you the most beautiful, caring environment and inspiring classes possible so at the end of when you have a tough day you can regain clarity.
Is Your Soul Asleep? I REMEMBER WHEN MINE WAS. THIS PRACTICE OF YOGA WOKE ME UP. IT WOKE ME UP TO MAKING GRATITUDE A HABIT.
When your soul is in charge your life becomes a LOVE STORY.
A love story between you and yourself, between you and everybody else, between you and the divine…...I’d love to seduce you into wondering about your soul; the way it moves, how it smells, feels, tastes, speaks, acts, even what it wears. And most Importantly how it is part of you that makes you a fascinating, mysterious individual. (By Gabrielle Roth – Sweat your Prayers)
A healthy Gratitude Habit can in the words of Melody Beattie "unlock the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." Sometimes all it takes to reconnect to our Gratitude Habit is coming back to the mat and reigniting that inner light through gentle reminder of how lucky we really are. "Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light." (Albert Schweitzer) So this week join me in taking the gratitude habit from the mat into the world. How? Try this:
· Reverse any tendency you have to make comparisons.
· Quit talking about what you don't have compared to what you have;
· Stop complaining about how you are doing career-wise, relationship-wise, or any other-wise.
· Instead, concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, saying to yourself from morning to night “I am grateful for…”
And I promise you will discover a life filled with gratitude wakes up and nurtures your soul and brings quiet joy! Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia
“Gratitude is confidence in life itself.
Gratitude gladdens the heart.
As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy.
Like gratitude joy gladdens the heart.
We can be joyful for people we love,
for moments of goodness, for sunlight and trees,
and for the breath within us.
And as our joy grows
we finally discover a happiness without cause.
We can rejoice in life itself, in simply being alive!”
—From “The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindess, and Peace” By Jack Kornfield
DOSHA CLASS: ROOT OF STRESS
Is this class for you? Well, if you experience stress in your life understanding Ayurveda can only help. Why? Because Ayurvedic theory takes nearly every conceivable stress influence into consideration—from seasonal changes that affect our well-being to what we eat and how we move that can all lead to disease. It also sheds light on the thought patterns and physical tendencies that can make stress a constant stumbling block or a non-issue, depending on how well we understand ourselves. To put it in most simple terms Ayurveda boils down to one basic idea:
Trace stress back to its roots, then find lasting ways to change the patterns that cause it.
According to Ayurveda, each of us has a unique mix of three mind/body principles which creates our specific mental and physical characteristics. These three principles are called 'doshas'. Most of us have one or two doshas which are most lively in our nature, with the remaining one(s) less significant. The three doshas are known as: Vata, Pitta and Kapha.
So join me to learn more about how to Balance Your Dosha, address the root causes of stress instead of the symptoms. All in an effort to live in peace and happiness. Yours with blessings, Silvia
INTRODUCTION:
· Philosophy is the love of truth
· Science is the discovery of truth through experiment
· Spirituality is the experience of truth and application of it in daily life
· Ayurveda is the science of life – both systematized knowledge and practical wisdom, an art of living healthy that ecompasses all phases of life, body, mind and spirit. It includes practical and theoretical aspects.
· Ayurveda building blocks – 5 elements (Space, air, fire, water and earth) exist in all matter both organic and inorganic. Man has all 5 elements within him as we are part of nature. Our 5 sense and how our bodys function related to the 5 elements.
· These 5 elements combine into 3 basic energies or principles which are present to some degree in everyone called doshas.
· Space/air make up vata
· Fire and water make up pitta
· Water and earth make up kapha
· Doshas govern our choices biological and psychological. When in balance they generate noble qualities such as understanding, compassion & Love.
· When out of balance due to stress, improper diet, environment they give rise to negative emotions such as anger, fear and greed.
· All three are in everyone but just like our fingerprints are different and unique everyone has an ENERGY PRINT
· Health depends on maintaining this proportion in balance. Balance is the natural order of things, imbalance provokes and reflects disorder.
· Health is order, Disease is disorder
· You can learn to see that self understanding is the foundation of life. Habits and tendencies are related to our constitution.
· When you can anticipate the kinds of illnesses and imbalances you are likely to have, you can take precautions to PREVENT THEM FROM ARISING. You can adjust your lifestyle daily routing, diet, amount of sleep, type of exercise to keep your DOSHAS IN BALANCE and health at its best!
YOGA REVEALS OUR HABITS
FEBRUARY 9, 2009: Today is the full moon. The moon reflects the sun. As BKS Iyengar says in Light on Life, “The meaning of Hatha Yoga is Sun (Ha) and Moon (tha), Yoga is which Sun is the Soul and Moon is Consciousness. Consciousness can be compared to a lens. Its inner surface faces the soul itself, and its outer surface comes into contact with the world. Inevitably a degree of grime attaches itself to that outer surface and obscures our vision. In fact prevents us from seeing clearly what is outside, and it equally prevents the light of our soul from shining out. If our house is gloomy because the windows are dirty, we don’t say there is a problem with the sun; we clean the windows. Therefore yoga cleans the lens of consciousness in order to admin the sun (soul).”
We all form habits as we go through life. Yoga teaches us that even our good habits keep us from growing spiritually. This is because habits are by definition an attachment to a pattern of behavior, or a form of dependence. So a key principle of yoga is to break our attachments. This includes not just our attachments to material objects (like needing a hamburger and fries to be happy), but also attachments to only seeing things our way rather than being open and accepting of other’s opinions.
Our time on the mat is important because it gives us a chance to examine our behavioral patterns or habits. When we realize that we are creatures of habit and that those very habits, even the good ones, keep us stuck in patterns and we begin to break those habits and to try different things, then true spiritual growth begins. Alex Levin puts it like this, “habits allow us to not think about what we’re doing . . . giving us the illusion of ease.” When we are under the illusion of ease, not thinking about what we’re doing. Breathing the same old way, moving the same old way, thinking the same old way we check out of the present, out of happiness itself.
I invite myself all the time to step (think) outside the box. For example: I emptied my bedroom of furniture and rearranged everything. I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Friday for the first time in years, I am going to a movie tonight at 9:30pm instead of during the day. Even my trip to
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost .... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit ... but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street.
LESSONS FROM MY TRIP THIS WEEKEND
FEBRUARY 2ND: My Dear Yogi Friends, as you know I was away this weekend for four days in Colorado. I was totally getting that Rocky Mountain High: breathing, skiing, yogaing, enjoying the sunshine! I benefited from many life lessons as a result of this trip that I will share in classes this week related to yoga philosophy. As always the most important of which is to wake up, pay attention and BE PRESENT in order to live life more fully in each moment. A fave quote that speaks to this is:
“Most of the time we don’t even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces.” -Anonymous
Some other topics that came up during this weekend: AHIMSA - a fundamental principle of yoga often known as non-harming, kindness and safety. Every day we are fighting for our lives but how do we do so without hurting others. How do we create a safe situation for ourselves where we aren't driven by fear but by the desire to be kind? COURAGE - not the front page stuff but the quiet courage that requires trust, faith and a really brave heart. HABITS - those habits with attachments that prevent us from growing spiritually. You know those one's that give us a false of sense of ease because we grow dull doing the same thing over and over again. OPENING UP - When we close down we are like fish moving towards dry land, when we open up and even allow vulnerability we flow with grace towards the ocean. The mountains helped me remain open even though all I wanted to do was contract during challenging moments. BE PRESENT - It is easy to see everything as flat and "ok" but that means we really aren't paying attention. This is when we are not awake for if we were living in the moment (where true happiness lies) then we'd see the depth, like the mountain ranges I experienced this weekend.
Ok, many other lessons learned over the weekend like Managing Doubt, Simplicity, Facing Our Fears, Body Prayer, Spirtual Seeking, Peace of Mind, but I'll save those for my book. Please join me this week to learn more about these key one's above. I look forward to being with you on the mat! And remember today is not a rehearsal - this is IT! Love to all, Silvia
HABITS: CHANGE YOUR BODY - STILL YOUR MIND
To be honest human beings are very much creatures of habit and routine. We can easily freeze in the rhythms of our lives.
Last night we were talking about playing rock paper scissors when we were little or freeze tag or monopoly and then reflecting on the habits we had as children (did you choose the same monopoly piece each time, did you play the same way over and over, did you pick your nose, bite your nails, procrastinate, brush and floss, eat your vegies). Which habits were healthy? Which one’s were unhealthy. And now as adults what are your habits today? Really most of life is habitual. If we don’t pay attention through yoga and meditation we’ll find that yes we do the same things today we did yesterday, the day before and every day for the last month or our entire lifetime.
Habits, good or bad, make you who you are. The key is controlling them. If you know how to change your habits, then even a small effort can create big changes.
From a yogic perspective a personal hero of mine famed yoga instructor Judith Lasater speaks to this when she writes: THE BODY CRAVES CONSISTENCY; THE MIND CRAVES CHANGE
My interpretation of this is that if we don’t control this key habit then our minds stay hyper active and our bodies get weak or develop patterns of holding tension in the same way promoting imbalance that leads to a lack of ease, “disease” and pain. Through our yoga practice last night we worked the body in fresh ways circling around the mat so as to bring newness to our bodies while staying really focused and consistent in our minds. We can retrain the mind to keep steady on the breath like when we are in svasana and choose the habits that are most healing for our lives! Love to you all, Silvia