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I Do Not Have, nor Have I Ever Had, My Shit Together

7/9/2017

 
PictureBy Booyabazooka Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0
In March, I wrote another book. By May, I was in the throes of one of the worst depressions of my life. I walked away from my teaching jobs, cancelled lectures, and completely withdrew from anything social. I quit doing my home practice and binge watched Survivor, all 34 seasons.

My therapist, who I’ve been seeing for anxiety, panic, OCD, and just generally being a spaz, was caught off guard. My normal eager to please, bring-it-on-I-can-do-it attitude was gone. I was a lump. She would make a suggestion and I would swat it away as if it were completely unreasonable. See a friend? I’m sleeping fifteen hours a day and not doing laundry. As if I’m going to “see a friend.”

Soon after this shift she said, “I think you might have bipolar.” I took the inventories, talked to my family, consulted my psychiatrist. They all agreed with her.

Denial, anger, bargaining, grief, acceptance. Damn it. I have bipolar disorder, characterized by looooong bouts of high functioning hypomania and sudden deep depressions.

Kick ass.

I’ve learned the hard way that mental illness is not something you fuck around with. So I got to work. For the last few months I’ve been trying different medications, dealing with side effects, and redefining my emotional baseline. I’m now finally balancing out on a low dose anti-seizure medication that for some reason works as a mood stabilizer. No one knows why.

Tomorrow I am going back to work, back to teaching super slow yoga at a drug and alcohol rehab, and I’m nervous. Really nervous. Yoga is different for me now. For the last six years I’ve gained a lot of my identity from yoga. The irony is not lost on me. The whole point of yoga is to strip away the outward identity, our enculturated masks.

But I thought in order to be faithful to the tradition I had to be it. I mean, it’s a lifestyle, right? I lived and breathed yoga. I judged my every thought and action in its framework. I judged other people by it too. I wasn’t practicing yoga, I was enmeshed in it. Lost in it.

Part of my current depressive cycle has been a rebellion against yoga, and it’s been interesting to watch. Yoga is not my life. No one thing is or ever could be. I’m a mom, a wife, a vegan, a writer, and a hundred other things as well as someone who does and teaches yoga. This was a hard lesson to learn. But my “devotion” to yoga falls into a pattern I’ve maintained for decades, a samskara if you like, of throwing myself into things headlong, whole heartedly, in order to hide within them.

A lot of good has come, and will continue to come, from my time obsessed with yoga. I have helped people feel better and learn coping skills. I wrote a book that I hope makes the story of yoga accessible to the average Jane and Joe. And I kept myself physically healthy and emotionally grounded during what could have been some serious manic benders and suicidal depressions.

None of that is erased. The only difference is that I no longer feel defined or confined by yoga, which is its goal!

But now I'm worried that when I get on the mat tomorrow, in front of needful souls in their various stages of crisis, that it will be different, that I may not be able to guide them as well without my manic obsession backing me up.

Even without it though, I do still believe in the practice. No matter how this weirdness that is modern postural yoga came into being and into my life, it works. It changes our brains for the better. I have to continue to trust that when the time comes all my inner drama
--all the definitions and ideas I have about yoga and what it is and who I am in relation to it—all of that will fade away, along with everything else, and be replaced with the magic that comes from moving beyond conceptualization and into that quiet attention to body and breath. Into the act of yoga.

​Why I Do Yoga  or  Hey Everybody, I Have Bipolar Disorder

4/26/2017

 
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I’m supposed to be making a flier to convince people to take my yoga classes at Shall We Dance. I tried putting all the usual things on the screen: Do something great for your body and mind! Build inner and outer flexibility, strength, and balance! Check out my awesome credentials!

But my heart just wasn’t in it.

You want to know why I do the physical practice of yoga? It may not be for the reasons you think.

I do yoga to help me get through the week. It’s no secret that I have multiple anxiety disorders (OCD, panic disorder, generalized anxiety). But recently I’ve been diagnosed with Bipolar 1, which makes a lot of sense given my hugely productive upswings and staggeringly apathetic lows.

But no matter what mood I’m in when I get to the mat, by the time class is over I’ve moved back toward the baseline, back toward feeling like everything is going to be OK.

It isn’t magic. I looked it up, because I fear being duped and appreciate scientific evidence. Yoga really does change your brain chemistry, if you’re paying attention. It’s the conscious act of placing your attention on the experience of moving and being still that
  1. initiates the process of flushing out stress chemicals,
  2. provokes the release of serotonin and GABA and a bunch of other feel-good neurotransmitters, and
  3. activates those parts of the brain responsible for feelings of peaceful equilibrium as well as patience, empathy, compassion, creativity, and the ability to concentrate.

Caveat: it works best if you move . . . very . . . slowly.

I say some weird stuff in class because of this connection between feeling the physical sensations of the present moment and the mental effects of practicing yoga. This is why I say:
  • Stay in your body.
  • Feel your whole body: front, back, left, and right.
  • Be aware of the stretch, and on another level be aware of your entire body.

I say all this craziness and other stuff to remind us (myself as much as everybody else in the room) to “stay embodied,” which is another odd thing I say. Because staying aware of being embodied is the trick to why yoga feels like magic.

So that’s why I do yoga. The rest is bonus. Sure, it makes it so my body hurts less when I wake up in the morning. Sure, I’m more flexible than a whole lot of other women in their mid-40s. Sure, my lung capacity is huge, I can open my own pickle jars, and I feel secure standing on my tiptoes reaching for stuff on the top shelf. There’s no doubt that a physical yoga practice helps maintain us physically. So would a lot of other types of exercise.

But what matters to me is being kind and present with my family and friends. And without yoga, my brain gets tangled in knots. Yoga smooths it out. That’s why I teach what might be the slowest (non-yin or restorative) class in town. That’s why I say strange things like “Feel your skin.”

There are other classes, other teachers, other styles, that serve other purposes. And I would absolutely recommend them if you want to sweep through the beautiful flows of sun salutes or gain mastery of the more challenging acrobatic poses.

But if you want to practice slowing down, being present, and changing your outlook, at first temporarily and then maybe even lastingly, you should check out my classes at Shall We Dance.

Now, how do I fit that onto a flier?

​Benefits of Yoga for Anxiety in a Nutshell

12/2/2016

 
PictureFrustration by Tanya Little. CC BY-SA 2.0
A college student recently sent me some interview questions for a paper she's working on about yoga and anxiety. One of the questions was “What are some positive effects you have seen with people who are struggling with anxiety?” I thought I’d share my answer here. If yoga has helped you, I'd love to hear about it!

People in my classes report both short term and long term benefits from yoga when it comes to anxiety. In the short term, they say having attended a yoga class makes the rest of the day easier to handle. This can stem from a combination of a number of things:
  1. the mood-lifting effect of having taken the time to do something that is good for them and that they enjoy
  2. rebalancing the nervous system with slow, deep breathing and savasana, and
  3. the neurochemical effects of shifting attention to the body, which lowers stress-related hormones and neurotransmitters while simultaneously increasing those chemicals that inhibit negative thoughts and induce positive emotions.

In the long term, I think the key word is patience. Even people who don’t have anxiety have told me that yoga increased their ability to be patient in frustrating situations. Anxiety makes everything seem urgent, overwhelming, and impossible. Frustration with self and others comes on quickly. The practice of yoga builds patience through purposefully and repeatedly removing our attention from our mental chatter and placing it in the body, using the body as the object of meditative focus. With an ongoing practice, we build the brain’s tolerance for frustration by increasing both the number of neurons devoted to patience as well as the strength of their connections.

With patience comes peace. Through the practice of yoga, we are increasingly able to slow down and handle the situation in front of us with thoughtfulness and compassion. This in turn allows us to rebuild our self-confidence, to know that we can take life as it comes. Then we can stop worrying so much about the past and the future and engage whole-heartedly with the present. That's the goal anyway!

Has yoga helped you manage anxiety? If so, I'd really like to hear your story. You can post here in the comments or you can email me through the contact page or at yogatoeaseanxiety(at)gmail(dot)com. 

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Relaxing by Onderwijsgek. CC BY-SA 3.0

Stages of Faith

8/5/2016

 
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Preparing for a lecture and discussion on the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita, I decided to throw in this information about the stages of faith. As I constructed my notes, it occurred to me that this is really super important stuff. It's a map of where we've been and where we're going, and it's a useful tool for understanding others on the journey. So, I decided to share it here. 
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As we grow, so does our mental capacity. As this happens, we go through various stages of development - cognitive, moral, social, and otherwise.

James Fowler put forward this model of the stages of spiritual development across the lifespan. What follows is an extreme simplification of his ideas. If you find yourself interested, please check out his book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.

Stage 0: Undifferentiated faith
  • Infancy
  • Learning to trust or fear the important adults in our life and also to trust or fear the environment. We come to believe that either the world will take care of us or that it won’t.
  • This sense of trust or fear will become foundational in our later sense of faith in the Divine.

Stage 1: Intuitive-projective faith
  • Early childhood (3 – 7)
  • Cognitively, this stage is fantasy-filled. It’s all about imitation and imagination.
  • Fantasy and reality are the same.
  • In this stage, development of spiritual understanding is based on interactions with important adults and the stories they tell.
  • In order to progress, we must develop concrete operational thinking; i.e., we must be able to use concrete concepts (concepts with a physical referent)

Stage 2: Mythic-literal faith
  • Middle/late childhood (7 – 15), this is the first stage that some people never move beyond
  • Here there is a literal interpretation of mythology and religious stories.
  • God is seen as a parent figure
  • To move on from this stage, we must develop abstract thinking

Stage 3: Synthetic-conventional faith
  • Early adolescence (15 – 21), can last into and through adulthood
  • This stage is characterized by conformity to the beliefs of others and integrating the faith of one’s culture
  • It is the beginning of creating a personal identity and shaping a personal definition of faith
  • To move on from this stage, we must experience internal conflict between personal beliefs and social expectations

Stage 4: Individuative-reflective faith
  • Late adolescence/early adulthood
  • Independent critical thinking leads to unique, individualistic worldview
  • This is where we begin to balance our view of self, other, and Sacred
  • To move on, we must desire to integrate the way we see the world with the worldview of others
  • (We have to want to get over “I’m right and you’re wrong” thinking.)

Stage 5: Conjunctive faith
  • Middle adulthood and beyond
  • Awareness of our finiteness and limitations leads to becoming more open to paradox and opposing viewpoints
  • (We know that we don’t really know. We are always open to the possibility that we could be wrong and someone else might have something valuable to say.)
  • There is an increasing appreciation of symbols and myths
  • We value our own direct experience as well as affirm other people’s beliefs
  • To move on, we must desire to reconcile our personally developed transforming vision with the world as it is
  • (We’ve changed but our world hasn’t. And that has to be ok.)

​Stage 6: Universalizing faith
  • Middle and late adulthood
  • Few ever reach this stage
  • Awareness of complex universal issues and loss of egocentric focus leads to transcending belief systems and realizing a sense of oneness with all beings
  • Conflicting events are no longer viewed as paradoxes
  • Often manifests as disciplined activism toward transforming the social order

So, to simplify it even further, when it comes to stories like those we’re going to talk about,
Stage 1 would say, “Neat!”
Stage 2 would say, “It’s not mythology; it’s history.”
Stage 3 would say, “This is a blueprint for how I ought to live.”
Stage 4 would say, “I call bullshit!”
Stage 5 would say, “Fascinating. What can I learn from this?”
Stage 6 would say, “How can I implement these lessons to make a world a better place?”

The Sacred Biochemistry of Self-acceptance

6/8/2016

 
​“Integrated inner work does not seek to overcome or perfect the body. It does not cultivate an aversion to any aspect of our humanity, nor is it about trying to get somewhere other than in our bodies. Rather it seeks to become more self-aware, self-accepting and compassionate within the lived experience of our bodies.”  
​​A few years ago, I fell in love with Julian Walker’s little book Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind: A Modern Yoga Philosophy Infused with Somatic Psychology & Neuroscience. Given this week to considering the Yoga of Darkness, I come back to it here, seeking refuge and rootedness in the biology of transformation. All quotations in this piece are from Walker. I hope you find as much hope in the process as I do.
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​There are certain stages along the path to growth. Georg Feuerstein labeled these as
  • ​Self-observation
  • Self-acceptance
  • Self-understanding
  • Self-discipline
  • Self-actualization
  • Self-transcendence
  • & Self-transformation

And while we progress along these in a somewhat linear way, until we come to the end we don’t outgrow any of them. We begin at the beginning, with observation and acceptance, and continue observing and accepting as long as we want to keep on the path.

Call it mindfulness, call it witness-consciousness — self-observation is the act of becoming aware of our thoughts and processes, our drives and hang ups.

And when we start to really see what’s inside, it can be pretty damn uncomfortable. It might be disappointing, disheartening, or downright scary. You may, as I did, realize a depth of mental illness that seems unrecoverable. You may find violence and dread; antipathy, weakness, disease; resentment, jealousy, or maybe systemic resignation.

Regardless of what you find, the next step is acceptance. 

​No matter what we find when we turn within, that is where we are. To deny it or berate ourselves because of it is not the way forward; acceptance and compassion are. 

​“Compassion is an attitude of empathy toward the reality of human suffering. On the mat this means turning toward yourself with the same level of kindness and care you would offer a very close friend or dearly beloved.” 
​The work is to simply be present with what we find. 
​“Being present is an open attitude to what arises in awareness as the breath moves in and out.”
​
“Authentic presence is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and one another. It becomes the hallmark of a more integrated person who can be with self and other, shadow and light, struggle and grace authentically.”
And this is the beginning of change, a real and lasting and biologically based change:
​“In neuroscience terms, we train the brain to be in a state of mindfulness when we choose again and again to stay present with sensations. We are being mindful of our bodies and breath and the moment to moment unfolding of the experience of sensations. This mindfulness state has been shown to activate neuroplasticity—our brain’s ability to transform not only function but also structure in response to experience.
​
“We literally enter a zone of transformational possibility at the level of the brain when we are in meditative states. We can be mindful in many different ways, but being mindful in relations to our bodies brings together a set of brain functions that make insight, compassion and integration possible in powerful ways.”
By simply experiencing our embodiment, staying connected to our breath, observing and accepting what arises with compassion, we allow our brains to rewire toward peace.
“We think of these three principles [breath, presence, and compassion] of transformational neuroplasticity as a doorway into the ‘sacred biochemistry’ of yoga practice. They represent both a poetic and science-informed way of seeking to frame the experiential processes of self-transformation through yoga and meditation.”
​To put this together with Feuerstein's stages: through the discipline of embodiment, we observe, accept and come to understand ourselves. We heal; we grow. Our brains heal, and our brains grow. We blossom, actualizing into our best selves. Eventually, we have transcendent experiences of union. We transform into beings of sacred radiance.

And it begins with compassionate acceptance of the darkness within.

Brain Waves, Yoga, and Meditation

9/9/2015

 
yogas citta vritti nirodha

Yoga is to still the fluctuations of the mind.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, chapter 1, sutra 2

Yoga means a lot of things to a lot of people, and I think most of them would agree that what ties the myriad types together is their effect on the mind. Whatever branch of Yoga we practice, the goal is the same: to overcome the mental chatter of the ego and, through that effort, to find spiritual liberation. 

My hope is that the following discussion about brain waves can help us on that quest by giving us two things: (1) a better understanding of what is going on as we progress through various meditative states and (2) words with which to label our experiences. Because, as it turns out, the practices of Yoga such as pranayama, asana, and meditation have a profound effect on the frequency of brain activity, in every sense of the term.

Brain Waves 101

Brain waves are electrical impulses created by groups of neurons firing together. Measured by electroencephalographs (EEG), they are categorized according to their frequency or speed. At one end of the spectrum are slow delta waves that are comparable to low, heavy drum beats and at the other end are fast, high pitched gamma waves, comparable to a piccolo played allegro.

While different wave patterns are distinct, the brain very rarely has only one type of wave going on at a time. Various parts of the brain can function at different frequencies simultaneously. Therefore, it’s more accurate to refer to certain wave types being dominant.

Also, there isn’t one type of brain wave that’s better than another; the goal for healthy functioning is to find the best, most functional balance for ourselves, individually.

First we’ll look at each of the wave types and when they occur, then we’ll find out how Yoga can help us better balance our brain waves.

Delta – Delta waves are the deepest, slowest waves. They occur during deep sleep and are more common in infants and children than in adults. Delta waves are associated with deep healing and regeneration. They can also occur during all-consuming states of meditation when awareness is completely detached.

Theta – Theta waves are slightly faster than delta waves and also found in sleep and deep meditation when our senses are withdrawn. Theta waves are associated with dreaming, deep relaxation, visualization, hypnosis, light sleep, and the hypnogogic state between sleep and wakefulness. Theta waves are important to learning and memory consolidation. In this state we can experience unconscious memories and very strong emotions.

Alpha – Now we are awake. Alpha waves coincide with quietly flowing thoughts. When alpha waves are dominant we are calm and alert, in the now. This frequency facilitates mental coordination and mind-body integration. Alpha waves are characterized by a relaxed presence, stable mood, and access to our creative and intuitive ideas. People who learn and think well spend a lot of time in alpha.

Beta – The fast waves of beta are associated with conscious thought. This is the realm of focused attention, problem solving, and social interaction. The beta range has been divided into two categories: low and high. In the higher bands of beta waves, highly complex thought occurs, new experiences are processed, and we experience excitement and anxiety.

Gamma – The fastest waves are gamma waves. At this super high frequency, several areas of the brain are working simultaneously and there is rapid information processing. This is the “Aha!” state, where we experience bursts of insight. Gamma waves also dominate in states of expanded consciousness such as universal love and spiritual emergence.
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Beta waves are often described as the standard for normal waking consciousness. But continual functioning at beta takes a tremendous amount of energy. It’s not an efficient way to run our brains and, over time, it wears us down. High beta is especially hard on the system, as spending too much time in it is associated with tension, stress, anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, agitated depression, chronic nerve pain, and spasticity. 

When beta waves become our only normal state, we can even stop producing alpha waves altogether. When this happens, as it does for people living with generalized anxiety, we go straight from spending all day dominated by high frequency beta waves to shallow sleep dominated by theta waves and right back to beta upon waking up. No alpha and no delta.

The benefits of Yoga and meditation for our brain wave balance

Yoga and meditation increase alpha and theta waves. These two types of waves are beneficial for our immune system, help to balance our brain chemistry in favor of better mood, and are where we process the information that we take in during beta. 

In Meditation and the Brain, Benjamin Kramer tells us that in one study “after only an eight week mindfulness meditation program, regulation of alpha rhythms helped the brain ‘turn down the volume’ of distractions in the surrounding environment. Researchers noted that mindfulness meditators had more ability to adjust brain waves and exceptional ability to rapidly remember and process new facts.” (Emphasis added.)

He goes on to relate that mantra meditation has been found to produce predominantly alpha waves, while open monitoring systems of meditation, such as mindfulness and zazen, produce theta waves. The practice of yoga nidra, a deeply relaxing form of meditation, produces both alpha and theta waves. 

On the other end of the spectrum, as Rick Hanson points out in Buddha’s Brain, “when experienced Tibetan practitioners go deep into meditation, they produce uncommonly powerful and pervasive gamma brainwaves of electrical activity, in which unusually large regions of neural real estate pulse in synchrony 30-80 times a second. . . , integrating and unifying large territories of the mind.”

While there are some theories, nobody knows exactly how or why this leap happens from the slow, low rhythms of meditation to the super fast frequency of transcendence.

What we do know is that the chatter of our everyday consciousness is the voice of beta waves. And through the practices of Yoga we begin to quiet the mind. We slow down to listen to the voice of alpha waves, the voice of intuition. We can even sink beyond that into the silence of theta.

And then, as with any spiritual transformation, a miracle happens. Or at least something we can’t explain yet. The concepts of grace and humility become relevant here, as we realize our limited control over the process. 


All we can do is practice, prepare, and be open to gamma waves and the higher states of consciousness that come with them.

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