Choice-Oh Really? !

'At the top of every mountain you find yourself at the bottom of a bigger mountain.' Pedro Fernandez.

The Yogic journey (life) can be seen as a bit like climbing a mountain. Sometimes we have the very difficult bits to go through, the steep slopes, we then come to the plateau's and cruise for awhile, we may look up to the peak and get our bearings. Sometimes it's a good idea to look at the view to see how far we have come.

It's good to take time out now and again and reflect on your journey so far to see where you are at now and how far you have come. Feeling the feelings associated with this reflection and using them to move on if it's time, or to rest if it isn't. Otherwise we just get caught up in a meaningless climb, climbing for the sake of it, maybe just to fill the empty void.

Keeping busy, rushing here and there never stopping to pause and reflect is just another way of avoiding feeling and depth. Compulsive busy-ness is a very subtle addiction, I don't have the time right now excuse is commonplace today. Shut up and keep still for moment and listen to the sound of your own heart beating, the sound and rhythm of you natural breath- So-Ham.

Remembering of course that it is always now and we are always here, how are you 'choosing' to spend your time, what are you 'choosing' to think about now? Is it a 'choice' or has your ego taken over the driving seat again, taking you to the place where emotional drama's reign supreme, Is this what you want? If it is great, if it isn't stop allowing it to happen and Choose!

HOW ??

You have the tools; Asana-Pranayam-Pratyahara-Dharana-Dhyana -- - - - - - - -right to the top of this particular mountain, you just have to start using them, NOW.

But don't become obsessed by the tools and don't get caught up on where you are trying to get to, enjoy the journey, even the difficult bits, in the end, become just another springboard for inspiration and movement, onward and upward.

'Not allot of people know that'. Michael Caine. (Apparently).

Hare Hare Mahadeva Shambo!

Errrrm

I think if you buy the book. 'Hatha Yoga Pradipika' By Swami Muktibhodananda, and read the first three chapters you will know allot about the basics of yoga. It costs about £15.

If you don't buy that book you may need to ask yourself a few questions as to what you are doing. It is a very good and clear book on the subject of yoga, with no hyperbole, just the facts as they say.

The ego is the biggest block to the expansion of human intelligence and consciousness. Why? Because it's whole existence is founded on things staying the way they are, and if you are changing things then things aren't going to stay the same. The ego also likes to be comfortable and the practise of Yoga is anything but!

'WE' become comfortable and in a 'groove', we idle in the 'groove', life is ok and that's good enough. So what happens is we get more and more comfortable until we don't want to feel anything at all. Discomfort is the 'touchstone' to experience and transformation. But there is a big difference in traumatising yourself with too much discomfort and working steadily with attention and detail to the particular Asana you are 'doing' and the way the breath is behaving while you are 'doing' it!

When Ida and Pingala are open and flowing there is balance and harmony. This is the priority, get out your neti pot now!

Hare Hare Mahadeva.

.

You think it's easy ?!

It's a tricky thing to teach someone something that has so much potential inbuilt resistance to it, and Yoga by it's very nature is challenging to the one thing it needs for it's beginning, the 'ego'. We may think "OH I think I'll do a bit of yoga I'm a bit stressed". Then once we start to undermine our outer mask and our aches and pains, we may begin to see (maybe) what we are really like underneath, or at least what we think we are like.

Wilhelm Reich whom I have mentioned before, discovered through working physically using deep tissue massage into the 'muscular armouring' of the human body as he called it, three layers of experience. The outer layer is the 'mask' we present to the world. The middle layer is the part of us we may think is the 'real' us, the angry part or the part that feels secretly guilty or resenful etc. Then there is a third layer which according to Reich was our authentic layer, what has been called recently the 'inner child'. This is a more sensitive layer, and therefore buried away to protect us from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or life as we know it!

Of course in an imaginary world that encouraged natural expression of emotions etc, there would be no need to bury this layer. Just to think back to school as I experienced it in the 50' and 60' it would have been suicide to show any sense of feeling. School was a tough experience in self-denial and pretending. You were caned for minor offences and hit on the hand with a ruler for talking in class. Well that's the way it was and I'm not going to cry about it now, but as an example of layering and armouring against the world here it is, right at that young age, the beginning of pretending to be ok when you really weren't.

So of course unless you had a healthy up-bringing (?) in the sense that you were encouraged to express emotions freely etc, then you are more than likely to have 'stuff' buried away in your 'muscular armouring' in the form of chronic tension and/or numbness. So, as we begin yoga Asana practise and a bit of Pranayama, we may feel what a great relief it is to have found a way to relax. But as we move/struggle through the gross physical muscular tensions and go deeper perhaps into the secondary layer where we store our anger or grief/sadness for example, it becomes a bit more interesting.

Memories can be stored within the muscular memory structure in the same way that it is stored in the mind memory. A 'triggered' feeling can remind us of past hurts, and a backlog of feeling associated with particular triggers is stirred up. All of this 'stuff' is stored away in what we politely refer to as the unconscious. Where do you think the unconscious lives? Well to be honest it's everywhere, in the muscles and soft tissue, the nervous system and heart.

If we become too hypnotised by our outer layering (ego) we may start to believe that this is who we really are. But as we move deeper into our feelings we may also start to believe that 'this' is who we really are. It's no coincidence to me that in some Health clubs I have worked in the yoga students complain the most about everything, why? Because for most of them they are starting to feel, and when that happens there is a great semi-conscious urge to make it somebody else's fault! It's a luxury I no longer have, blaming someone else is so nice, and to take it all out on somebody else and never have to own to the fact that it might just be you that is doing this to yourself is great temporarily but ultimately frustrating arrrgh! Of course that's not to say there is never anything wrong 'out there', it's just if we choose to make it our business, now there's the rub.

Now what is important here (I think), is that if you don't make some kind of commitment to the practise you may just keep being angry and overly sensitive all the time by staying stuck in the second layer of feeling (Anamaya). You may get through the first layer and stay there and keep re-traumatising yourself over and over. You may become all feeling with no grounding through the mind (Ajna, Manomaya), you may become hyper sensitive to everything and everyone, this happens to all of us from time to time, but getting stuck in it is not too good.

Unless you become committed to going through the deeper layers, you may stay in the superficial layers, until one day you give up yoga because (you think), it doesn't work, it's too hard. There is a perverse sense of relief in hurting yourself just so you can feel the relief of it when you stop, I think it's called masochism.

I say get on with it, go to as many classes as you can and try and stick with one or two teachers at the most, any more than that is just confusing. You may be the lucky one though, and just keep it all on the surface and skim around to various teachers to suit your mood, another way of avoiding going deeper in my opinion.

'It's all an illusion innit'? Sam Canardly.

'Do you know the way to San-Jose'. Burt Bacharach.

'Beauty's only skin deep, yea, yea, yea.' The Temptations.

'Ouch' Vincent Van Gough.

Om Namo Narayanaya.

Overview. The essentials.

The Eight Limbs of yoga are; 1.Yamas, (Observances). 2. Nyamas (Restraints). 3. Asana (Posture). 4. Pranayama (Breathing). 5. Pratyhara (Withdrawal of the senses). 6. Dhyana (Concentration). 7. Dhyana (Meditation). Samhadi (Immersion).

According to some, (Patanjali et al), the Eight limbs or steps of yoga should be completed in order, through one to eight. Mastering one step then moving to the next in a sequential process.

According to others (Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Bihar yoga school), the sequential root is a virtual impossibility to achieve because of the way we live today (?), and that it is better to do the 'shatkarmas' first, then proceeding to Asana and Pranayama.

I personally feel the second way is more favourable to me. As I have become more adept at Asana and Pranayama I have been able to take on board the ramifications of the overall process of consciousness transformation, a la Yoga! If somebody had told me I had to do Yamas and Nyamas before I could do an Asana, I would never have started. I was a victim of my head as it was and needed to get some oxygen in my brain first.

The "Shatkarma's" are the six yogic cleansing techniques. They are; Neti, Dhauti, Nauli, Basti, Trataka, and Kapalbhati. I would recommend you go to Youtube and type in these names and you will probably get ample demonstrations of these procedures. Just to remind you that the people on youtube are there for there own reasons and some of the techniques may not be correct, but it will give you some idea.

The essence of Yoga is the awakening of consciousness, Yes/No?. What we are or at least 'should' be thinking about from time to time is, 'what am I doing with this stuff?' It is a powerful and radical tool of transformation, so it is important that 'you' keep your own counsel on matters relating to 'your' personal journey and you need to be very wary of someone that tells you they know more about you than you know about yourself!!

In order to do that you really need to know who you are, at least as much as you can at this point in time. That is to say, ask yourself seriously, why you want to do yoga in the first place and secondly, how is it working for you so far?

Life is the way it is and we have good days and bad days with or without yoga. Be as grounded as you can be when listening to what teachers are telling you and what they are trying to get you to do, and if it doesn't feel right, then it probably isn't.

'Avoid Nutters!' Written on a wall in north London.

We are who we are now as a result of many years of conditioning, and to change this conditioning in any way may take a long time, so don't be in a rush, because it's taken you a long time to get this way. Enjoy the journey.

Om Nama Shivaya

The end of all illusion :)

My ending comment in the last blog, 'are you getting anywhere' is a bit of a 'red herring' really because essentially there is no where to get to is there?

Boring as it may seem we are always 'here' and it is always 'now'.

When you go on holiday you change the scenery but not much else. Another way of getting away from yourself is to keep going on holiday.

If we invested half the energy we spend on escaping from ourselves we could change allot of things inside permanently and then not need to escape anymore.

Hmmmm, bristling and mutterings of outrage can be heard from here to Goa. (A) "What no holiday's are you kidding, I would die." (B) "Oh really why is that then? Aren't you living the life you want?" (A) "Well yes but I need a break now and then!" (B) "Ahhhh poor sausage".

If you invested a little more time on thinking consciously about the way you live your life and the way you spend your time and apply it to your practise you may change something permanently.

Yoga is not a way out it is a way in, a way into yourself so you can see who you are and who you have become. See what it 'feels' like to be you and be honest with yourself. This may be very upsetting or it could be very uplifting. Probably the worst thing for it to be is neither, where you may have got to the point of 'not caring' anymore about your life, or anything at all!

Turning everything to our advantage is one of the biggest things to realise. We do live in incredible times, in spite of what the doom and gloom merchants are saying, we have allot to be grateful for. Especially the fact that we are sitting at the forefront of a long line of wisdom and philosophies which stretch back thousands of years all more or less accessible on-line, the great google god is here to enlighten us and educates us.

'We have no excuses!'

Of all of the disciplines to survive the past fully intact, yoga is the most complete and comprehensive system of consciousness transformation available today.

I know there are herbs and drugs which apparently open up doorways to these so-called higher realms of consciousness. But yoga seems to be totally internal in it's modus-operandi, absolutely nothing is required, all you need is your God-given birthright of a human body and the wherewithal to endure the journey to freedom, simple but not easy.

'The maps are there all we have to do is use them'.

Anyway we have an incredible pharmacy right inside of our own body. Our nervous system is a series of minute electrical impulses leading to hormonal/chemical responses.

Quite simply put if you think negatively you will be sending those chemicals into yourself, and vice-versa, if you think positively you will send those signals into yourself.

Although I have to admit that this has been easier said then done for me. If you have been conditioned since birth to be a miserable git like me you may have your work cut out for you!! But nevertheless it will work if you work it!

When you do pranayama you are changing your consciousness, you are moving into higher levels of awareness and consciousness. So when you get into this state of being don't waste it by jabbering about nothing just to fill the void, shut up and meditate on it all. Then as you gradually drop back into so-called ordinary consciousness meditate again but from this state of awareness on what you were like in the other state. You are now looking at awareness with awareness, you are looking at intelligence with intelligence. You have now discovered at least two separate levels of consciousness and you can look at them and experience them from different levels.

'It's very subjective'.

If you read John Lilly's book; centre of the cyclone. He has mapped out at least 8 levels of higher consciousness and 8 levels of lower consciousness. This is based on idea that paramount reality, i.e, the place where we spend most of our time is in the middle.

Once we move through Asana to Pranayama we then meet the internalised focus of Pratyahara - Dharana - Dhyana. These are all the same thing for longer periods of time! Internal focus for extended periods of time, leading eventually to total immersion where subject and object are no longer separate - Samadhi. Do you want to wait any longer for this, or maybe you are too busy, too miserable or too happy to be bothered, which is it?

OM :)

WHo Are YOU ?

If you have been following this blog you may have come across the idea of 'not knowing' who you really are.

If we can see ourselves as conditioned beings, that is conditioned by our life experiences and shaped by them, then we have to ask at some point, Is this it, is this who we are?

Robert Bly the poet proposed the theory that when we are born we are 360 degrees of living feeling human being. As we start to grow and become educated (brainwashed) we start to conform to the rules and regulations of whatever particular society rules we live in. So we begin to regulate our feelings and behaviour as it may not be ok for you to show too strong emotions around the place, we suppress and control ourselves until it becomes 'normal' for us to behave that way, we are now conditioned by events and places.

According to this theory by the time we reach 21 we have shut so much of ourselves away that we only show about 20% of ourselves to the public, the other 80% is shut away. According to the poet Bly we put all of this stuff into a bag and drag it behind us as the unconscious.

He goes on to say that at certain points along the way events happen to us which may shock us into waking up, the death of a loved one, or a serious life threatening illness, a divorce etc are examples of times when we may question the way we live our lives. It is at these times that we may start to do something like yoga, as a way of giving some meaning to our lives. We may then start to look into this big bag we are carrying around and take some of it out. The more we take out the lighter the bag and the more whole we become again.

Yoga is also definitely something that can be used for the 'wrong' reasons. I think I have mentioned before that you could just add it to the list of addictions/habits that you already use in another attempt to make yourself feel better, along with drinking and smoking. Rushing into a class at the last minute and rushing out again! We feel better for a while then we have to go back and do it all over again, very tiring in the long run.

Unless Yoga is done the 'right' way it can be counter-productive to your well-being. (My opinion).

So what do I know you might ask? Well I am someone that is incredibly thick and I have made all the mistakes you could possibly make when it comes to yoga and everything else. But it seems that with my background I have managed to live through my mistakes so far. At times along the way a trip to the doctors to ask for some valium seemed like a very good plan, but I persisted and continued with my practise and am reasonably happy with my state of affairs today, to say the least!

I have no idea I must admit, as to what makes one person feel happy with one class per week and another who needs five. You do what you can I guess, until you see the value of something and then maybe you make it a priority.

So Who you are is really determined not by what you have done in the past but what you are (consciously) doing now. How are you shaping up? Are you happy with your progress? ARe you getting anywhere?

Om :)

nostrils.

Imagine doing 20 years of therapy just to find out that you should always keep your nostrils clean and open, so that you can breathe properly, what a waste of money!

The past has happened already and we have been affected by it more or less and we can stay affected by it for years, but at some point we have to move on. Otherwise we wear our past like a medal of honour letting everyone know how much we have suffered and how much we are still suffering. It's an incredible realisation to see that we can end suffering just by seeing through the 'games' we play with our own mind (software).

I'm not as naive as I sound, of course I believe that there are terrible things that happen to people and that we can be wounded very deeply by past trauma, but it seems to me that is has become an industry.

The film 'Fight club' although it is complex and male oriented it portrays a picture of victim consciousness, people sitting around talking endlessly about how bad it all is and never looking at a solution. The 'fight club' in a way is a metaphor for these victim/underclasses to face the biggest fear, in this case it is portrayed as violence, and the facing and fighting of each other is a solution for them. But it could just as easily been anything else. They face the 'fear' and become empowered. In this case they want to overthrow the banking monetary/consumerist system which they view as being the problem.

What are you scared of? Death! Well now there's a thing to be scared of. But if we look at that a bit more we may start to realise that we don't really know what death is. We can read all sorts of theories but no one really knows for sure what death is and where we go after we die. So in effect we are really scared of the unknown, are we not?

The dreaded unknown is something we are faced with every single day of our lives. But we don't know it like that because we move from moment to moment semi-conscious most of the time, drifting from one moment to the next and then arriving back in our bed at night wondering what happened. We have become victims of the life we have created almost unconsciously. Ouch! Or maybe you did choose this life that you now have, and if you didn't what can to do about it, it's never too late, is it? Of course you may believe in reincarnation and you may feel it doesn't matter too much because you can sort it all out in the next life, ha!

If you sit still and think about it for a moment you realise that you have no idea what will happen to you today. You may have a vague plan and will probably do what you did yesterday more or less but you never 'really' know, do you?

It's very exciting to realise that we don't really know anything at all!

When a person becomes scared for any reason chemicals are pumped into the bloodstream creating a physical sensation of fear and dread. We have all felt it and it registers in our memory banks as something to be avoided at all costs. What is this something to be avoided? Is it the experience or is it the memory of the experience that we avoid? Being in a peaceful state of mind is all in the mind.

We can be laying in our comfortable bed, the most expensive and biggest bed ever made and we can be extremely tense and anxious, worrying about all sorts of imagined catastrophe's. We could be in a tube in the rush hour having just done a three hour relaxation class feeling as peaceful as can be. We may then realise that it is not the setting that gives the us peace it is our internal attitude towards that setting that gives us peace.

For me peace within is the beginning of understanding and if we make that the goal then everything else will follow.

So if you get up in the morning and clean out your nostrils, using the 'neti pot', you will be able to breathe more openly and freely, beautiful. You know what it's like when your all blocked up and can't breathe, it's horrible. This is an important priority, breathing freely and cleanly through both nostrils feeds your brain and makes it work better, right or wrong? I would say it makes sense to believe this. When you feed your brain it will work better!

When you feel the aches in your body you realise how much tension you are holding in. If you don't feel anything you are either very clear or very numb, you decide which of these you are.

'A man travels the world several times in search of the ultimate truth. He arrives one day in the deepest part of the Himalayan mountains. He hears of a man living in a cave somewhere that knows the 'real' answer to the secret of the universe. He staggers across vast mountain ranges for days on end until he finally arrives at the mouth of the cave. He goes inside and travels along miles of tunnels until he arrives at a vast inner chamber. Inside this chamber is a small lake and in the middle of the lake is an island. He can just make out a small figure sitting in front of a fire outside a hut in the middle of the island. He shouts across, "Master, master oh please tell me. I have travelled many years and miles to find you, you must tell me the secret of the universe." Slowly the small figure stands up and shouts back. "Keep away from all humans they are a pain in the arse! Now f--- off!

P.s Keep your nostrils clean and clear and keep breathing deeply.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The journey without distance

At the end of a practise, whatever type of practise you choose to do. There is, or should be, a period of relaxation. You entered the class 90 minutes or so earlier, maybe coming in from work and now here you are relaxed, or at least more relaxed that you were, hopefully.

What has happened to you?

It's not necessary to know what has happened, but it is 'useful' to know so that you can enhance the practise from here on. It's a bit like going on a journey, you begin, you get halfway and you arrive. The more familiar you become with this journey you may begin to see certain traits at certain points of the journey. You may notice resistances to certain postures or breathing techniques. This is valuable info!

'Awareness is a psychological constant' Arnold Mindell, The Shamans Way.

We are aware but we become more aware as we progress on our journey. It's as if the awareness button has been fine-tuned and we see more and feel more of the subtleties of our mind and body. At the risk of being boring I repeat; Increasing awareness is a double edged sword.

Continuing practise = Increased awareness = Increased responsibility for yourself.

At the beginning of our practising we may struggle through the class and at the end feel a huge amount of relief. After several months or years we may find we can do things much easier, the challenge then may be boredom. 'Where is this yoga thing taking me?" You may ask.

We may get 'egoic', in fact we are bound to get 'egoic' on our journey, or maybe thats just me! We may look around and see how good our postures are now compared to others, we race through the sun salutation, doing it all wrong, but if feels good, so we don't care. Time moves on and we then find we hit another barrier, we are hooked on yoga! We have been doing it for years now and know the class inside out but we are still going to classes. And?

We may begin to believe that yoga has no final destination*, we don't get a medal or a black belt in yoga. What do we get then? Maybe it's all a big con, they just want my money! But I still feel good so what.

Peace between the ears is upon us, yoga seems to relax us if we are stressed and energises us if we are tired, what more could we want?

And here we arrive at another 'moot' point.

Personally all I ever wanted was peace between the ears. Being born with an over-active mind and imagination has led me down some pretty dark alleyways. Having lived through the sixties and seventies and the confusion that brought with it, and then through the Thatcher 80's and...... well here I am now 2010, un-confused.

The 'moot' point for me is once you have achieved peace of mind what more is there to gain?

Does all wanting and craving come essentially from a lack of satisfaction and peace? Which is all in the mind anyway, right?

Sit down or lay down and breathe in and out through your nose. See where it takes you. Then do a posture, any posture, then breathe deeper, then do another posture. Keep going until you have had enough. Then relax and breathe calmly and regularly though your nose. If you still feel stressed, anxious, over-thoughtfull do it all again! What have you got to lose?

'Lose you mind and come to your senses'. anon.

Om nama shivaya

Do It!

It really doesn't matter how many times or which way I say it, but the essence of it all is to do it everyday. No excuses really do it, do it, do it.

Do what everyday?

Practise!!

Otherwise you can sit around moaning about everything and feeling miserable. Because that seems to be the general mind-set of the world. We are frustrated that the politicians aren't doing their jobs properly, global warming, recession, gloom and doom all around. What can we do?

If you see through the mire of your own mind you can see the startling reality that lies behind the mud.

If you can't be bothered, just have another drink, that's all there is really. Oh yea you could also do therapy for twenty or thirty years.

Am I being cynical? Maybe.

To me it seems that the more desperate you are the more likely you are to be prepared to do the hard work of practise.

If you suffer from the dreaded 'low-self-esteem' then you want nothing more other than to be told by someone that you are special and different, but what if that doesn't come?

As I keep saying; what you believe to be true is true.- until such truths are challenged and tested in the laboratory of your own nervous system. That is Yoga!

Is it True or False folks ?

What is it that is real?

Ouch fire burns!!

Hmmmm.

Sitting still and calming down your own heart beat with the calming thoughts of your mind is easy enough if you have the commitment. Can you make your mind calm and calm down your heart? Can you breathe in and out through your nose calmly in order to see that 'you' are making yourself upset by the things that you input into you bio-computer (brain), and that you have a choice as to the software you input in to your bio- computer- brain?

'It's all down to you guv'. Sid James.

You really don't need a vast manual or hours of therapy to see the simple truth of this - do you?

Shanti- Shanti- Shanti. Ommmmmmmmmmmmm

communication.

I think that before we speak we should all say, 'in my opinion', because that is all it is. And on this site it is all 'in my opinion'. There are no absolute truths really, in my opinion. There is just my experience of things and how I share that with others, if I want to.

In the mind what you believe to be true is true. Until such truths are challenged and replaced with other truths. We thought at one time that the Earth was flat, now we know it's not. But I have never been in a spacecraft to look down at the Earth so I have never seen the roundness of the Earth for real. But I am quite prepared to accept the images I see in films and pictures etc of this roundness of the Earth.

'If every body's right, no one can be wrong.' Quinn the Eskimo, Bob Dylan.

'Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy'? New-age Statement.

We do what we do because:

A. We want to.

B. We ought to.

C. We should.

D. We don't know anything better to do.

E. We are stupid.

F. We are very clever.

G. God knows.

Unless we know ourselves how can we really know what to do. If we spend thirty or forty years trying to figure out what to do there won't be much time left to do anything at all. So we do what we do.

I have always envied people that knew what they wanted.

How can we know if we are truly being ourselves?

In my opinion if you can bear the thought of sitting still for extended periods of time and deeply ask yourself who you are and what you want, you may just get somewhere a bit quicker. Not that there's any rush though, ahem!

But the question is: CAN YOU BE BOTHERED ? ? ?

It not unreasonable at all to be satisfied with who you are and what you have. Some people have very little and seem to be very content. Others have huge fortunes and seem to be very miserable. I'm not saying that being rich makes you miserable and I know that poverty does not guarantee happiness either, so what is it, this thing called happiness?

'Shut up and do it!' Sergeant Bilko.

If you come to the conclusion or understanding that you are a miserable git, then be a miserable git, get on with it, why pretend otherwise? Then at least you are being authentic and from that place you may start to see something true.

What has any of this got to do with yoga? Nothing and everything! I do this because I like to do it and if you like to read it good and if not, good too, go away and read something else.

The next time you find yourself really miserable, stand in the warrior (2) pose for ten minutes on each side. See what happens! Count the breaths, then relax, if you still feel miserable do a shoulder stand for 5 minutes, count the breaths and relax. Keep going, make it up as you go along until you either cry with exhaustion or you start laughing. If neither of these work go for a walk or call someone on the phone and tell then how you feel. Keep going, keep breathing.

Failing that you can just feel miserable until something changes, cos it will eventually, you just have to wait that's all.

Ida - Sushumna - Pingala

inhale - retain - exhale

Puraka -Kumbhaka - Rechaka

Left - Center -Right

'There's life captain, but not as we know it!'. Mr Spock to Captain Kirk. Star Trek.

'There's a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in.' Leonard Cohen.

Hare Hare Mahadeva!!

Kundalini ?

'This ultimate 'goal' of yoga must always be remembered when we are researching yoga, for we know that yoga can give us relaxation, alter our brain waves and hormonal secretions, endow us with health, induce concentration and better memory, help us to develop better human relationships and to enjoy everything we do, to have fun and fulfil ourselves in a healthy and balanced way. However we must see that these things, though they are all worthy and good in themselves, are not the ultimate goal of yoga, but are side effects of our pursuit of higher awareness and deeper knowledge of the truth of our existence. To pursue these things in themselves is another trap, a trick of the mind. For they do not exist by themselves but are the outcome of a complete process of living. The Yogic process of total development of body, mind and spirit, Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna, is the most systematic way to attain these things and more.' From the book Kundalini/Tantra. Swami Satyananda Saraswati. Yoga publications trust.

As I read this I found myself agreeing with it, but then I wondered how I would have felt reading this in the past when I was more unsteady in myself and more liable to the fluctuations of my mind and emotions. I would have been grateful just for some peace and steadiness of mind. But here we have it, the truth about the practise, the bottom line, as they say.

It is good to know where you are at in your practise and to enjoy it! As much as I find most of the current yoga teaching rather appalling I have to concede that if you are enjoying going to classes that play loud music and/or whatever else as a gimmick, then that is the level you are at and you 'should' enjoy that until you don't.

'We all come in different ships but we all end up in the same boat!' Overheard at a funeral.

To enjoy life is the goal of most of us who live on the material plane, what else is there? You do what you do until you don't. Looking at it from the perspective of growing up more or less normally, what I did at age 16 and what was important to me then is not even on the radar now, i.e, worrying about the latest fashion trends and going to the coolest clubs or bars, help!

I think I have mentioned earlier that 'I' think age has to be acknowledged as part of the process of where we may be at in our practise and what is important. For example I'm not as interested in Asana practise now as I used to be, I'm more interested in developing my inner connection through meditation and pranayama. You may need to acknowledge what is is you are doing and going with the flow of your personal practise a bit more, to get to know yourself as they say.

One has to watch out for the traps in the journey. To me getting caught up in the whole perfect posture thing and looking at yourself in the mirror is the biggest trap of all. There are as many ways to achieve enlightenment as there are people on the planet. And what is this thing called enlightenment anyway? Surely it's just a waking up to the realisation that we are our own creators of Heaven or Hell and that we had better get a move on and start taking more responsibility for our thoughts and decisions and ultimately our actions, if we want,at the very least, to be more happy.

"Oh Really I never knew that"

What really is there to know?

What is this big secret?

You either know it or you don't.

Or you don't care one way or the other.

Which one are you?

And do you care anyway?

Hari Om

Searching ?

If you accept the idea that the 'ego' is a conditionally created thing, then you have to accept the fact that the ego can be changed.

I like the idea, that when we are born we are like a new computer and our hard drive is programmed for evolution. We move through the various stages of personal maturation more or less without needing to be conscious of any changes going on. We suckle, then we crawl, walk, talk, etc as the hard-wiring triggers these processes more or less automatically. At a certain point we find we are adults and that we have gone through the basic stages of evolution.

What apparently separates us from other species on the planet is that we have the ability to think and reason. Crikey!

The software of our newly born computer brain is another thing altogether. Where we are born, the parents we have and their lifestyle, views and opinions etc will create the software programmes that will be with us for the rest of our lives, unless they are somehow changed. We are shaped psycho-emotionally within the first 5 years of our lives according to modern psychological opinion.

We could assume then that this software once programmed into the sytem can be changed any time we want it to be or more commonly as a result of events in our life. For example if our parents were very religious and insisted we should be too, we may rebel and become anti-religious. Our parents political views may have shaped our outlook on life and we may conform or rebel against that too. So once again life and it's processes take care of us in an almost automatic way, could this be Karma?

As we grow and experience life for ourself, we may change our opinions and views to match our own experiences. We may rebel or conform to certain ideas and beliefs etc as we grow up and become more mature. So according to this theory as we get older we should get wiser. I'm not sure if this is true. What is probably more true is that the older we get, unless there is some kind of intervention, we will become more 'set' in our ways. We become less able to adapt to new ideas and situations, we become stiffer in our minds and bodies.

We are all more or less identified with our personality structures. If we think of any of our friends or relatives we get an immediate impression of that person. It's as if we get a felt sense of that person, we know them and what they are like. It's always a bit if a shock when someone we know very suddenly changes, it's almost as if we have to adapt something in ourselves in order to accept this new reality version of the person we thought we knew! Sometimes if the change is too great we let them go, we can't go with the change. These changes can be very disturbing to our 'set' ways of seeing the world.

So here we all are, all ego constructs and personalities living in a flimsy reality made up of a hotch-potch of borrowed ideas and impressions. Hmmm sounds more and more like the matrix every second. The existentialists questioned deeply the meaning of reality and all got a bit depressed about it. They came to a dead-end in the road and some of them went mad for their trouble.

The problem as I see it for these guys was they were trying to solve the problem of 'ego' reality constructs with their 'ego' reality constructs. They were doomed to failure and misery. Pity they didn't have a yoga class to go to, ahem!

'Is he Joking here or what?'

If it is possible for you to make your mind quiet does this mean that you longer exist?

If your personality drops away and there is nothing but empty space do you still exist as a personality?

If you could really let go of all conditioned thinking and see the world as it really is what would you do?

Are you doing what you want to do now because you decided to do it or did you just kind of end up here because you were following your egoic dictates?

Are you happy? Is true happiness possible? And if it is how do we get it?

There is more: If once we see that thinking is subjective, in other words we can think anything we want, do we then assume that all thoughts are meaningless?

If you sit in deep meditation for hours on end and see the thoughts rising and dropping away you surely have to come to the conclusion that there is nothing 'real' in the mind except whatever 'you' decide is real.

'Fire burns, ouch!'

Well it looks like I've gone of on one here a bit so I will desist.

But you know what I'm saying don't you?

There really is no choice you either accept yourself the way you are or you don't, it's that simple.

The 'game of yoga' is about becoming more and more conscious or ourself and our conditioning as we move through the various elements or limbs of the yoga system. We become conscious re-programmers of our-selves.

Read John Lily; Centre of the Cyclone. And . Programming the Meta Programmer for a much deeper view of this subject.

'Tomorrow never knows' Beatles.

'The conscious breath is the access key to the unconscious.' G. Shinglebury the third.

Hare Hare Mahadeva.

Peace or pieces ??

What more is there to have once you have peace? The way I see it everything we seem to do is so that we will be satisfied in some way. Eating for example is something we 'need' to do to survive. But more often than not we will eat, not because we are truly hungry, but to satisfy a 'need' of some kind. Maybe it is a feeling of dissatisfaction or emptiness, or both, under the popular guise of boredom. Here I've used eating but you can replace that with your own thing, i.e the thing that you like to do when you are bored!

If we use our awareness to go into the these types of feelings we may find quite a rich source of energy and information. We may realise that our hunger is for something more satisfying than food.

The practise of self enquiry is the act of asking our deeper self questions as to the nature of our inner reality. As we learn to detach from the small jabbering mind we find a different level of perspective, a more intuitive way of thinking, (Vignanamaya Kosha?)

How much time do we spend just for that purpose, of self reflection? The last time I went to a yoga class in a yoga centre people seemed to crowd into the room at the last minute and as soon as the final relaxation was over they we charging back out in to the world.

Taking some time to reflect or meditate is the reason we do the asana and pranayama in the first place, or at least it should be. To me most yoga classes seem to provide a reprieve from some kind of compulsive scheduling of the insane mind-set of super driven robots. A place where they can switch off their mind for a nano-second and breathe for a moment or two before rushing back out into the traffic. But maybe this is the way things are now, maybe this is where we have evolved to?

I know I'm being a bit cruel again, but unfortunately this is the way I see it! People generally don't even look at each other let alone talk to each other in most yoga classes, me included by the way!

Wilhelm Riech was a man that existed in the early part of the 20th century. He was one of Freud's top students until he disagreed with Freud's basic theories on sexual repression and the problems caused by this. What Reich discovered apparently was that people were literally 'shaped' by their experiences of life, he also discovered that sexual repression led to neurosis at best and psychosis at worst. He proposed that sexual repression was somehow fed to people through the prohibitive tones of religion and to a certain extent politics. He also felt that the religio-political connection served to literally cut man/woman of from their sexual expression and energy and take away their freedom of consciousness and creativity. The repressed sexual energy was then diverted into the 'ego' feeding the neuroses and in worst cases causing paranoia. This was written during the rise of Nazism and post the sexual so-called revolution of the sixties by the way.

What the yogi's proposed 2000 years more or less before Reich, was that this sexual energy is also somehow related to the evolving consciousness of man/woman. Tantric/kundalini practises provided the manual for humans to evolve more consciously and more quickly.

You can find an excellent treatise on Kundalini in the book, Kundalini Tantra. Yoga publications. Swami Satyanada Saraswati.

If you also get Hatha Yoga Pradipika by the same publisher you will have more than enough to keep your practice going for years to come.

Energy apparently is limitless in our universe. We the humans seem to have got into a bit of trouble with the so-called over exploitation of the planet. We are using our resources and not our intelligence. We have idiots running the world, or so it seems. How did that happen? Well I have no idea to be honest and I have no ides as to what to do about it apart from using less resources and becoming more intelligent. Hmmmmm.

If we waste our personal energy we won't evolve very far. We use energy to run around and pay our bills and buy more things and play all sorts of mind games with each other. But how often do we sit down and focus our attention on ourselves, learning to conserve our energy and use it with intelligence? Becoming more creative and less destructive with our time.

You cannot do this work without becoming more aware of things. What is going on, do you ever ask yourself?

So back to Wilhelm Reich, what did he say? He said that repressed sexual energy led to Neurosis. The yogi's say if you direct this sexual/pranic/shakti energy up the spine and into the brain you will 'switch on' your intelligence.

So it seems to me that unconscious repression of energy accumulates within the organism and then starts to find it's way to the ego, the energy is then fed to the ego causing the ego to become inflamed and out of control (Neurosis). In other words an inability to switch off the mind even for a moment manifests itself. Reich's answer was for everybody to have lots of sex to release this damned up energy out of the system and therefore to relax.

The trouble is with this according to the yogi's idea of activating Kundalini Shakti. Is that if we keep discharging the energy through too much sex, or any other way for that matter, we will be left depleted with low energy, and therefore too tired to care about anything much, let alone raising the Kundalini.

Hari Hari Om

Too busy

Three questions: What does it mean to be too busy to find time to do yoga? Have you got the time to breathe ? How many chances do you get to live the life you want to live?

It's a terrible realisation to wake up to the fact that you may be unhappy. The activation of kundalini shakti and the awakening of the brain's inherent intelligence will make you more aware of everything. Awareness is a double edged sword, because we will become aware of everything including the things that bother us and upset us. These things that bother us could be small or large things, family issues, or work issues etc are some of the most common.

If we make it even simpler, as we sit still still to meditate what happens to us? As you choose to decide to relax does your mind start to wander off here and there to focus on your issues? In other words we are either peaceful or we are not, and if we are not why not?

What is it that is preventing you from being peaceful?

We could for example say that 10 is max tension and stress, and 0 is max relaxation and peace and at any given time we are somewhere along that scale between tension and relaxation, between 0 and 10. This is a subjective experience, for one person a little tension may be fine and for another may push them to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

If we become a little clearer about where we are along this scale we can act accordingly. If we are too tense then we should do something about it, i.e do a few Asana's, do some pranayama, stop thinking and start breathing and feeling. If we are too relaxed and we have some things to do we can also use Asana and pranayama, maybe some warrior poses. It's all there for you all you have to do is choose to do it. You unfortunately now have NO excuses!

It's great to have someone or something to blame for all of your problems but sooner or later you may have to get real about it. It is all your doing and the responsibility is with you to do something about it.

Having said all of this, it is wise to respect your condition, a person that has been stooped over for 30 years will not be able to suddenly stand upright no matter how much they may want to. It may take many years to correct poor postural conditioning. We will also be conditioned psych-emotionally and it may take some time before we can change something.

If you have grown up with misery as the background for your life it's not going to change overnight. I'm saying this because I think it highly unlikely that someone who is content and happy in the first place would want to do something as challenging as yoga, I may be wrong though, I sometimes am.

Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing and is this what you want? Hmmmm tricky questions these.

You can use Yoga in the way it is meant to be used. Clearing the blocks to awareness and peace through regular practise.

Do it or don't it's really up to you, if you don't do it don't complain it is your choice after all.

OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMS

Feeding the brain.

The brain needs oxygen. When we inhale we take in oxygen. When we exhale we breathe out carbon dioxide.

The exchange of these energies takes place in the alveoli of the lungs. Oxygen passes across a membrane into the bloodstream and is carried to the heart. Carbon dioxide is carried across the membrane into the bronchioles of the lungs and is exhaled.

Once the blood is carried to heart it is pumped out and around the body via the arteries. One it reaches it's destination and the oxygen is delivered it begins it's return journey to heart carrying de-oxygenated blood and carbon dioxide waste. Once delivered back to the heart it is taken back to the lung alveoli and exchanged once more for oxygenated blood.

The lung capacity is between 5-6 litres according to most sources. A normal shallow breath carries about half a litre.

The body requires oxygen more than food or water, without oxygen we will die within a matter of minutes under normal circumstances. So we have to conclude that breathing is very good for us.

When we inhale consciously and take a deep breath we need to use our will to open up the lungs. The resistance to inhaling fully will be in the muscles of respiration, especially the diaphragm and ribcage, (note the word cage). The diaphragm is a large muscle that circumferences the ribcage, an umbrella shaped muscle which the lungs rest on top of. When we inhale the diaphragm moves down and it goes up on the exhale. Also the ribs lift and move laterally. Between the ribs are short criss-cross muscles known as intercostal muscles they are very tough muscles and they hold the ribs together.

So there is a natural resistance to inhaling and exhaling consciously and deeply on a physical level. But what about our resistance to breathing from a psycho-emotional perspective? This is an important thing to look at. If you notice it you will find at different times that you may have more or less resistance to breathing deeply. You may also find that when you are deeply engrossed in thinking you will not generally be breathing too much, the breath becomes shallow.

All of the books on the subject that I have read agree that the brain requires oxygen for optimal functioning. The brain is our intelligence centre and our seat of consciousness. Could it be true that if we improve our oxygen supply to the brain we will improve the brain function. As we breathe deeper we send more oxygenated blood to the brain and open up the arteries and veins that supply and keep the brain clear of too much carbon dioxide waste. This would surely be too simple! But nevertheless it could also be true.

I have banged on long and hard about looking at the way we think and the things we tend to habitually think about. A pattern is formed in our system, an habitual pattern is set up in our system. If we connect the two functions of breathing and thinking together as do all the decent yogic texts we come to a grand conclusion. That breathing and thinking are closely related in a very unique way.

Just imagine someone sitting in an office all day slumped at their desk typing into a keyboard not breathing hardly and drinking tea or coffee all day.

The way the functions of breathing and thinking are connected is obvious from a yogic point of view if we remind ourselves that yoga practise is more or less designed to make us more conscious and therefore more intelligent. Now what is similar with breathing and thinking from this point of view is that both actions can be done more or less unconsciously.

What I mean is that when we breathe we don't have to think about it, and also when we think we don't have to be too conscious of what it going through our mind.

But! And it is a very big but! (drum roll please). Once we bring the act of thinking and breathing into unity and consciousness we have changed everything. That is, if we breathe with more awareness we become more aware in general, of our feelings especially, which is a whole other topic.

Activating awareness is essential for our evolution on a microcosmic an macro cosmic scale. Waking up to who we are now and who we want to be is the point. Who are you now, and are you happy with being that person, and if not why not? What is it you want to do now?

Ok so, for me there is a big difference between thinking in a fretful and worrying kind of way (left brain), and thinking in an inspired intuitive way, (right brain). Which way do you think?

If we have a problem, and we all do from time to time, it is pointless running away from it. Yoga is not a magic bullet, it is the science of mind/consciousness/awareness expansion and evolution. It is the grand plan to activate your intelligence and wake you up! It is not a money spinning project for the consumerist society we live in to gobble up and spit out as anther useless fad.

You really do not need to go anywhere. All you have to do is sit down and look at yourself in the mind of reflection. As you do this, start to breathe with more awareness an see what happens. Notice the resistance you have to this process and relax.

One more thing; The disparity of who you are now to who you may want to be at some point in the future, i.e the dissatisfaction you may feel with your current life situation is not to be used negatively. Learn to use this tension to move you forward. Use it to make you breathe deeper into the warrior mode, using the warrior poses to ground through the feet and feel yourself connecting to gravity. Feel the fierceness of the warrior mode and utilise it's strength to open you up more deeply and powerfully.

'This is your life'. Eamon Andrews.

'Sweet dreams are made of this' Annie Lennox.

Om Nama Shivaya.

We have Asana's and Pranayama to use to change something within us, what do these two things change? Why do we do what we do, are we looking for something? According to the yoga material that I have read, the yoga material with any relevance that is; The point of yoga is to attain Samadhi! What is Samadhi? One explanation calls it 'the merging of subject and object'.

Is this what your after, the merging of you with the great field of Universal cosmic consciousness?

It's ok if you don't want that right now, but if you don't want that, a very good question to ask yourself might be, what do you want?

'Be careful what you pray for you just might get it'.

I remember meeting someone many years ago that was going through what most people might call a nervous breakdown. When i asked him about what was happening to him he told me that he had been so fed up with his life at a certain point that he had prayed for enlightenment. Since that time he said his whole world had fallen apart.

The question I have often asked myself is; Does the practise of yoga work on the body/mind even if the person participating doesn't really know what they are actually doing?

Well it does actually, it must, why shouldn't it? So in that case it is better to know what is happening to you as you go through the process. The body has a memory and this is what we call the unconscious. As we approach our body/mind in a new way, i.e with more awareness and consideration for feeling, we become more aware of the way we think and feel. This is generally a good thing, but for some of us it may be challenging. We may not be used to feeling intense feelings, we may not be used to uncovering some of the thought processes that we normally hold out of our normal range of consciousness. the yoga mat is the interface of the conscious with the unconscious.

When you go to a yoga class, you go in with your narrow band-width of awareness and as you start to relax you may start to breathe a bit deeper. You may even feel that ache in your lower back a bit stronger. Thoughts about your job or your relationship or something else may start to become a bit stronger. If you have been doing yoga for a while you may have learned how to let go of these feelings and thoughts a little better, to be able to focus on the rhythm of your breathing.

As the class continues you usually find the breath opens a little deeper and you can concentrate more easily on the instructions of the teacher. The body warms up and the postures come easier, you are getting familiar with the class and the teachers voice is reassuring. You are learning to relax, you are learning to think but not be affected by your thoughts in a reactive way. You are more responsive and less re-active to things in general as you learn to detach.

The class ends and you go back to your life feeling more open and relaxed. Things seem better now and things seem to flow more smoothly. This is the case most of the time at least but I'm sure there are times when this is not the case.

Thoughts affect us in various ways. You can think about whatever you want to, this is called freedom in the mind, there are no limits to what we can think about. And yet how often do you find that you are thinking about the same old things. The petty worries and fears that we hold onto just keep us in a semi-state of stress, a low grade stress which we have become so used to that we accept it as normal. In our culture the absence of illness is used to denote health, a real selling short of our real health. The next time you feel a bit low take a walk to the local hospital and look around at the mess people have got themselves into through lack of consideration and responsibility for the own health.

'No mind equals peace, what more could you want?' Anon.

The cravings and addictions that govern our lives are substitutes for the real thing. The real thing is peace, peace between the ears. Once you have that what more do you need? Well I could think of a few things, but you get my drift. Look at what is preventing you right now from being completely peaceful. The unconscious drives that Freud talked about are the ambitions and desires for power and wealth and prestige, this is not peace.

Peace is peace and once you have that surely there is nothing else to need, that is if indeed you can get to a level of mind whereby you feel at peace with yourself in the first place. If you don't know what peace feels like how can you know how to get it and what it feels like if you do get it.

Ignorance is bliss = Ignorance is keeping things at bay so I/we don't have to deal with life on life's terms. Ouch!!

'If you don't go down and get it, it will come up and get you!' Hermann Schullerstein.

You are the experimenter and you are the laboratory and your own nervous system is your very own laboratory. Don't take my word for anything do some handstands and breathe deeply through your nose for five minutes, see if that makes you feel better or worse. Would you know if it felt better or worse? Or make a cup of coffee or tea sit down and worry about something pertinent.

When you find yourself moaning and complaining about something, stop for a moment and take a few deep breaths, look in the mirror and laugh at yourself, see if this changes anything.

Go to the nearest heath food shop and ask them if they have a cure for 'shamanic dysentery' see how they react. Do something interesting and write a book about it!

When all is said and done at the end of the day you lay 'your own head' on the pillow to sleep.

Om shanti.

Mind over matter or matter over mind ?

Following on from yesterday. The mind, i.e what we think about, will affect the way we feel. If we think thoughts that make us feel anxious we are sending messages to the body to secrete hormones that will trigger us into action to deal with the threat. This occurs whether the threat is 'real' or 'imagined'. The heart speeds up and the mouth becomes dry, and we may sweat, these are also the symptoms of an overactive thyroid.

Ask yourself if you agree with this, please don't take my word for anything!

Then if it is true what is it we can do to prevent this happening? How can we stop thinking anxiety inducing thoughts? What thoughts do we have that may make us anxious in the first place? This is where it gets personal, one man's meat is another mans poison, so to speak. What make me happy may make you anxious.

It is a good idea to keep a 'spiritual diary', in other words just jotting down a few notes after each practise you do, will start to show you patterns of thinking and feeling.

It is also a good idea to do a practise at more or less the same time each day, or every other day, if you can.

It must be true that if we can wind ourselves up with our thoughts we must be able to wind ourselves down too. But having said that, once the body is out of control and reacting chemically/hormonally it is hard to bring it to order again just by thinking peaceful thoughts. This is where asana and pranayama take the stage.

We breathe in and out all the time, but when we breathe in and out consciously we change something dramatically, don't we? What do we change? We become more conscious for a start, because we have to focus to be able to breathe a steady deep breath.

Becoming more conscious or awake is a double edged sword, because it will make us aware of some of the things we may rather not be aware of, some of the things we keep out of sight out of mind.

This is all OK because the amazing thing is that our mind actually belongs to us and we can do what we like with it. This is an amazing fact a wonder to behold! Our mind belongs to us alone. The problem is then for some of us (me included) why don't we have any control over what we think about all the time?

'My mind belongs to me and I will think thoughts that are good for me'. Mr Mulligan.

How many of us find that we are lying awake at night worrying about something. We would rather be sleeping but there we are wide awake thinking on and on and on . . . . . . . . . . . .

What can we do? Get up and do an asana, then breathe and relax, then do another asana, then breathe a bit more, a bit deeper, another posture another breath, relax and let go. it's really that easy isn't it, ahem?!

Now I know what I'm like, and I've got all the excuses too, as to why I can't possibly get up at three am and do yoga, but I just cant think of any right now. How valuable are you to yourself? How much do you want to work for 'the peace that surpasses understanding'. If you can't be bothered you are welcome to keep worrying and stressing, that is entirely your choice.

Peace needs to be worked for, this is my experience. Breathe and do asana until you feel better. I dare you.

Of course the unacknowledged part of us doesn't want to admit, that we actually may tell our self that we enjoy stress the way some people tell themselves they enjoy smoking . In other words we have been like this for so long it has become familiar and in a bizarre kind of way it's comfortable too. Oh dear.

You can influence your body with your mind and you can influence your mind with your body, by breathing deeper and letting go of stress and worry.

And the great thing is this is just the beginning . One day nothing will bother you, can you work for that?

1.Asana - 2.Pranayama - 3.Prayahara - 4.Dharana -5. Dhyana - 6.Samhadi.

3, 4 and 5 are about going inside yourself and staying there for longer and longer periods of time. As you extend the periods of meditation you will begin to see that the 'small mind thinking' has no power over the 'real self', of expansive consciousness.

Do it and see what happens.

'Lose you mind and come to your senses'. Sixties saying.

Om nama shivaya

When was the last time you were really relaxed, do you ever take the time to relax, I mean really relax? If you are into yoga then you are probably someone who either does it because you enjoy it, or you are someone that maybe doesn't enjoy it but gets some benefit from it. whatever reason hopefully you can see that it is 'good for you'.

The sympathetic nervous system is one half of the Autonomic nervous system. It functions to protect us from harm. Part of it's job is to stimulate the adrenal glands to secrete norpinephrine into our bloodstream to enable us to run away from danger if we are threatened or to fight the threat literally and physically. So the next time you are in the checkout at the supermarket and you find yourself getting wound up because the people in front of you are taking too long, or you are stuck in a traffic jam, and your heart starts beating faster, that is your sympathetic nervous system at work. Road rage in fact is a great example of the 'fight or flight' response still alive and well and doing it's job properly. It's surprising we don't get more of it to be honest.

The fight or flight mechanism is there to protect us from danger. But in our safety conscious world, seat belts, traffic lights, rubber playgrounds, hard hats etc we are not so threatened anymore from the outside, in spite of what the media portrays we live in a very safe world in comparison to the past.

But the threat now is more from our imagination, worrying about everything and becoming hyper-sensitive to noise and crowds etc. We squeeze into the rush hour and can't wait to get back home. Then we watch the news of disaster and chaos from all over the world. This is many people's reality and this is how things are accepted as so-called normal now. The news media trawels the world looking for something to worry us and make us miserable.

So we drink and smoke and make merry and try to forget about it! And guess what, you can even watch that on the telly now, people making arses of themselves drunk and incapable is now deemed good entertainment. Pass the Jack Daniels please!

Anyway as I was saying the nervous system is taking all of this stuff in and processing it and making us chronically tense. Chronic tension is tension that has been there for so long you don't even know it's there anymore. Then you try to do a forward bend and find there is no flexibility in your muscles, the joints have stiffened up and you notice the shoulders are drooping and the abdomen is getting large. So you go to the gym under pressure and watch the telly while you run on a treadmill. You find that alleviates some of the tension, but then you feel tired, so after a while you give up and tell yourself it's all rubbish anyway and you're ok the way you are blah, blah.

There is a solution as most of you already know, change your mind and change your body. The body has become shaped by the way you live. If you are six feet tall and you live in a five foot room you will walk with a stoop and one day you cant stand up straight. Sit up straight and breathe through the nose. Do a down ward facing dog, then a cat stretch, then breathe some more and repeat it a few times, feel better? No! Then do a shoulder stand and and plough and a fish and relax and breathe some more. How do you feel now, tired, angry, upset, just keep breathing and surrendering to what is really happening now, nothing. Do this everyday, do it twice a day until it starts to work, because it will work, it will work.

Some places are now charging thousands of pounds to 'train' people to become yoga teachers. Be careful about where you go for these trainings and who is training you- remember some people need your money! I know having a certificate will give you confidence and you can get insured as a yoga teacher if you do a training, but the 'greed' I see in the yoga world is staggeringly hypocritical. Look around and ask questions. . . . . . . . . . . .

And don't forget about your para sympathetic nervous system. This is why there is a large proliferation of cranio-sacral therapists they are there to get you to let go so your body can heal itself. So if you got the dosh to pay someone £50 per hour or so for that then off you go. But you could do three yoga classes for that and learn some thing in the process. Empower yourself with yourself, breathe and wake up!!

Hari Hari om