Shake It Off! - Living stress free part 2

 

We all know the scene right? She's a welder by day and dancer by night- dancing, shaking, and gyrating around the floor like a maniac. You may think  it is fun to watch, tiring or even obscene, I think this is a great example of stress release!

I have introduced this idea of living stress free vs. stress management in my previous blog.  What I really want to emphasize is stress happens people!  Stress is an inevitable part of being human.  So that begs the question how can we live stress free when stress is a part of every day life?  Great question! I am glad you asked. Living stress free does not mean we live in a world of rainbows and lollipops.  Living stress free means we learn how to RELEASE the stress when it comes into our lives rather than absorbing it.  That is the fundamental difference between managing your stress and living stress free.

 If you chose to manage your stress that means on some level you accept and absorb the stress into your being. Then because it hasn't been released it always shows up somewhere, somehow.  Maybe it shows up as pain or maybe it comes out as an emotional expression. Or even worse an accident or major illness.  Because you are just managing what already exists, often that stress just gets pushed into another hidden corner of your consciousness with only temporary relief.  Its that idea," if I ignore it it will go away."  But it never really goes away is just gets stored up in different parts of our being only to come out later.  More often than not this coming out has very bad timing.  Have you ever noticed when you may be going through a particularly stressful time in your life you somehow end up with an injury or illness to compound what you are already going through?!  That is your body saying, "Hey I haven't got rid of all this other stored up stuff and now you are adding to the stock pile!"  It is also the minds' way of creating a diversion from the emotional stress that you are currently going through and giving you something else to focus on.

In yoga we have a saying, "Our tissues hold our issues."  Generally our everyday consciousness is not holding onto the stress, especially old stresses.  Instead they get suppressed and are stored in our subconscious, tissues and nervous system.  So we need to release both the old stresses and new ones.  Now there are lots of great ways to release stress.  Back in the day when the Mongolian warriors, some of the fiercest warriors ever, would get done with battle the first thing they did (after a hot shower) was they would get massages.  Not just ordinary massage but deep myofacial release to rid their tissues of the stress of battle. That way the next time they went out on the battle field they were not carrying the weight of the last battle with them.  That is one of the reasons they are known for being extraordinary warriors of their time. Today that type of deep tissue release is called myiofacial release and/or Rolfing.

Another interesting example of this release comes from the animal kingdom.  If a gazelle is chased by a lion and narrowly escapes, when it knows it is safe it will go off into the bush and "shake it off".  In fact all animals naturally shake to release trauma.  It's a part of the body's natural balancing out system.  The fantastic thing is that this is part of our DNA too!  When we have put so much stress on to the nervous system it can literally be shaken off.


The following video is an example of T.R.E.  A shaking technique given to trauma patients to help the body release the physical storage stresses in the body.

 

This isn't rocket science.  It's simple movement.  The mind might be telling you that stress release has to be more complex than this.  But isn't it the mind that got you into this situation in the first place? The beautiful thing is that you are not expected to have all the answers or come up with the best possible solution that the situation may be calling for. What you can do is choose how you react to any given situation. I say SHAKE IT OFF!!! However you want to do it is up to you.  If you encounter a stressful situation as soon as you are able to go into a safe place SHAKE IT!  Whatever it may be- just shake it!  Push the table aside turn up the volume and have a Flashdance moment of your own or simply move in a way that feels good to you. Take control of your reaction, give yourself permission to really let loose and see just how much better you feel afterwards.

Never, Ever Give Up. Arthur's Inspirational Transformation!

A moment to gather

Have you ever tried to do something but at every attempt it seems like the whole universe is against you doing that very thing you are intent on doing?  That's the very thing that is happening with this next blog post.  I am contemplating how to write about living stress free- and do it with wit and intelligence. What I have to say about this topic seems so important that when you get done reading I expect to hear your "Ah-ha" moment in my living room. Yet as I try to write all that is whirling around in my head I come up blank.  Never a good sign for writing.

So as I sit idly looking at the computer screen I realize what the Universe is trying to tell me is to LIVE IT. Stressing out about getting this blog post out "on time"-which by the way is an arbitrary deadline I set for myself - is certainly not practicing what I preach.  And practicing what I preach is the most important work I can do.  So I am letting go of  my arbitrary deadline for this next post.  I am reading books, gardening, and filling my free-time with idleness. It's wonderful.  You should try it sometime.  Just doing nothing.  Being idle just because. If you can allow yourself to go there, without guilt, or shame, or a to-do list, doing nothing is out of this world!

Even as I search for quotes to back me up on this one I was quite disappointed. It seems Idleness has been frowned upon for generations.  Ok I get that, back in the day when survival was hard work, idleness was considered weak and threatening to the survival of a whole family.  But what about today?  What it takes to survive in this world has taken a major shift.  Food, clothing and shelter are relatively easy to come by.  Now whether you have realized it or not, our survival is mainly dependent on our own life-style choices. The way it's looking most everyone is racing to their early graves.  Not because of starvation or exposure, but from totally preventable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and yes I dare say cancer.  And what is at the root of all these diseases is stress. And why do we have so much stress????........ Because we have eliminated idleness, quite, stillness, calmness- all of those things that eliminate stress.

Woah -this post is writing itself.  I have science to back me up on this one. Originally that's what I wanted to write about but this is what I ended up with.  So until the next post in which I hope to present you with the science of this stress free living stuff... think about this?  Can you just do nothing and be content?  And if your answer is no, why not? 

Would You Rather? Manage Your Stress or Live Stress Free!

The next few posts I am going to do a series on living a Stress Free life so please keep posted for follow-ups. Also, please check my interview with fellow blogger, Life Coach dynamo, yoga teacher, and all around inspiration Jasna Burza.  jasnaburza.blogspot.com

This idea of stress management has been a rising topic for the last 10 years or so.  If you haven't noticed already- people, businesses and corporations, and products are all jumping on the stress management bandwagon by the masses.  But I have a question for you, why do you want to manage your stress?  Don't you have enough in your life to manage already?  Why in the world do you want to add stress management to your "to-do" list when you have the option of living stress free?

The way I see it, stress management is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Whether you chose to crash and burn or learn ways combat stress and compartmentalize stress in your life-you are still fighting and adding more to do and eventually it is going to take it's toll on you. The stress doesn't really go anywhere it just gets rearranged.  The problem lies in the fact that you are not addressing the root of the issue just the branches.  Surface cures create surface relief.  To be stress free you need to go to the root of the issue and dealing with the root means lining up with our true selves.  How you internalize and respond to any given situation determines the stress response.

 Now don't get me wrong, taking steps to address your stress and change patterns can indeed be very powerful place to start and believe me you have to start somewhere. The thing is, we are the only ones that create stress in our lives and therefore we are the only ones that can eliminate it as well.  A situation that totally stresses one person out may be completely enjoyable for the next. I'll give an example, you and a friend are shopping downtown. As you exit the store there is a parade happening on the street just outside the store.  You really don't like crowds but you friend loves parades. So you are persuaded into staying to watch.  During the whole parade you might be feeling stressed in the crowd while your friend is having a grand ole' time. Both of you are at the same place, seeing the same things but having completely different experiences.  The situation is the same the difference lies in the individuals response.

 Some of you are really going to be bummed out when I say this, but there is no secret magic pill to eliminate stress.  Stress release and learning to become stress free is going to take effort, awareness, and knowledge.  But believe me the pay offs are infinite.

As I was doing some research on this topic I found lots of websites with plenty of helpful information on how to manage the stress in your life.  The problem however is that most help out there on this topic is single dimensional. Most of the advice was "find time for yourself- do activities you enjoy, read a book, take the dog for a walk, keep a journal.  Say no."  What I am not reading in most of these other sites is that stress is multidimensional and affects us on many layers - biologically, physiologically, emotionally and spiritually.

When you are doing all of those "relaxing" activities you are still DOING something.  The stress just get pushed into another area of your life.  As one of my teachers Dharma Mittra so beautifully puts it, "TOTAL BODY RELAXATION IS THE ONLY ANTIDOTE TO STRESS."  Not only does stress has a cumulative effect but it .  It builds over time and the effects can literally be deadly.  If you really want to get to the root of your stress and eliminate it you need to learn how to be in the quiet.  Sit in silence. Just be.  Meditation, yoga nidra, soaking, pranayama, restorative yoga, and similar techniques are all ways to go into that deep space of your being.  What is most important is that you make an effort to disconnect from the outside world and go in.  Since we are all trained so well in always being on the go and being "productive" with our time we need to retrain ourselves in how to be quiet and still and go in.

So in an effort to keep this blog post short (hehe) here is your first tool.  Give yourself some time each day to be quiet.  To sit in silence, close your eyes take long slow deep breaths and just be.  A technique used in Vipassana meditation is to simply focus on the point below the nose and above the upper lip as the breath moves in and out.  Thoughts will arise.  Rather than following the thought bring your awareness back to that point and your breath. Try this for 5 minutes then eventually work your way up to 15 minutes. Now you are doing yoga.

Taste of India

Hello my friends!  Lately people have been asking all about my trip, my experiences in India, what I learned and if I was going to post any pictures.  Truthfully I wasn't planning on talking much about the trip.  Not because I don't have anything to say but because this is not a travel blog and I didn't want to bore anyone with trip photos.  Yet what I realized is that folks really are interested in my travels. I also realized that this is an experience that needs to be shared since so many of you have invested your time, energy, and money in me- it's only right that I give back.  So please sit back and enjoy my taste of India.

 This is Saji my teacher.  He is what you would call a bonefide yogi.  He has been practicing yoga since his early teens and it shows.  Not only is it amazing to watch the ways in which he can move and hold his yoga asanas but just being in his presence you can sense the light that shines from his being.  He received his Bachelor of Yoga Science in India and now he runs International Vasishta Yoga Research Foundation in which he teaches Yoga Teacher Training, Advanced Teacher Training, and Yoga Therapy Training courses.  Right now he rents space from the Chinmaya International Foundation ashram in southern India. Eventually he and his friend will have their own ashram to run these courses.

You can check out his website at vasishtayoga.org

 This is the yoga hall.  Every morning we would wake at 5:30am and meet here to meditate until 7:00am.  Then we would have a yoga practice until breakfast time at 9:15am.  Then we would come back here at 11:00 am for lecture until 1:30pm.  Then meet back here for more lecture at 4:00pm.  After evening lecture we would have another yoga practice until dinner at 8:00pm and then some nights we would meet back here again after dinner for an evening meditation.  So yes, the majority of my time was spent in this wonderful space.

My room at the ashram.

My roommate :) At least for a short while.

This is Durgana.  The day I took this picture it was her 85th Birthday.  She is from South Africa and one of the students in my course.  A true testimony to the fact that you are never too old to do yoga. 

This was a typical meal at the ashram, all vegetarian of course.  It was a special meal because of Dugana's birthday so we were served on a banana leaf. Very eco-friendly!

On this evening there was a local spiritual Shiva celebration.  Here all the local women gathered and stand waiting to transfer " light" from the men's temple on the ashram grounds to a nearby local temple.

Indian traffic.

Yep that's right- he's talking on his cell phone riding an elephant.  A perfect example of India today.  Ancient and modern harmoniously clash.

Our last practice was partner yoga fun...

This is me getting my certificate at our graduation ceremony.

And this is the group on the last day after the graduation ceremony.

So that is a small visual taste of my experience in India.  Over the next few weeks, months and probably years I will continue to share all that I learned from this delicious experience.  Bon apetite!

Take a deep breath and relax

Ok, so I have officially been back for a full week now and I am still decompressing and processing all the information I learned in India.  I also realized that I had broke my computer habit while I was away which is great for my personal life but not so great for this blog.  I guess now is the time to learn balance in all things.  I would also like to invite you to become a follower (like my mom and my friend Linn-thanks Ladies) and leave comments.  I have so much I want to share with you that sometimes I don't know where to start so your comments would be appreciated.

The last post I introduced the Pancha Koshas (5 sheaths of our being) and mentioned that  imbalance in the first 3 layers- the body, the energetic layer, and the mind manifests as dis-ease in the body.  See ancient yogis thousands of years ago figured out that there are only 2 causes of dis-ease: Stress born diseases or non-stress born diseases.  The non-stress born diseases are injury, infections, toxic exposure, or congenital.  Everything else is born from stress. Knowing this is powerful!  If something is caused by stress it can be healed by removing stress from your life and learning new ways to move in the world that benefit rather than harm the body.

This is where yoga comes in to play.  In the western world we have adapted yoga to mean physical activity for our physical body.  It's time to learn that yoga is so much more than that.  The physical practice is only a part of the picture. Yoga is a way of life.  It is an ancient spiritual science that has the capacity to bridge the gap between the demands of the modern life-style and the natural rhythms of our true-selves.  Where modern medicine is largely a science of disease and treatment,  yoga (and other alternative modalities) offers techniques for the healthy functioning of the human mind and body that both prevent and reverse disease.  The World Health Organization (WHO) recently defined health as a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well being. Sure we all know the mental and physical aspect of good health but did you know that your social life and spiritual life also play a major role in your overall health as well?   Each factor is interdependent on the next for good health.  If any of these areas are lacking or dysfunctional, dis-ease will occur. Another way of saying that is poor attention or misguided attention in anyone of these 4 areas can cause stress and stress will breed dis-ease in the body.

So here is your first basic lesson on how to combat stress in your life.  

                         Calmness of the mind
                         Relaxation of the body
                         Slowness of the breath
 

 Can you think of any area in your life where implementing these three things would not be beneficial?  So the first step to calming the mind and relaxing the body is slowing down the breath. One easy technique is making the exhale longer than the inhale.  Try it- over the next week anytime you start to feel stressed out or pain- slow your breath down and make your exhale twice as long as your inhale. Take 10 of these slow breaths then just observe how you feel afterwards. Now you are doing yoga.

This is India

Greetings everyone! I chose not to bring any electronics with me to India so I could enjoy the whole experience of not being plugged into my everyday life (which is dependent on computer, cell phones, and electric toothbrushes). Power outages, broken computers, long lines and time crunches have made writing a post a challenge (to say the least). But as the saying goes around here "This is India." Anytime something is funny,beautiful, strange, amazing, broken, kind, loud, unusual, unpleasant, unwordly, anything really we say "Ah, this is India!"

So far my experience has been all I could have hoped for and more. Every day is filled with yoga, eating, yoga, eating, yoga, eating, sometimes more yoga and sleep. Of course when I say yoga I am not talking about doing 12 hours of physical practice. The program encompasses all yoga practices of meditation, mudras (chanting), asanas (postures), cleansing techniques (yikes), relaxation and theory. I am gaining so much useful knowledge that I can't wait to share it all with you!

I will share this with you. In yoga there are 5 levels of our being called Koshas. To put it simply they are the physical, energetic. mental, knowledge, and bliss (spirit) levels of our being. Starting from the outside 1. The physical body - Annamaya Kosha.  2. The energetic level- Pranamaya Kosha.  3. The mind level- Manomaya Kosha. 4. The knowledge level- Vignanamaya Kosha. 5. The Spirit/bliss body- Anandamaya Kosha.  What I have learned is that  most (90 %) of our diseases and illnesses come from the third level, the mental level - Manomaya Kosha. Stress in the mind penetrates the other levels of our being and causes harm to our physical, energetic, and mental beings (the 3 outer layers).  The 2 inner layers of our being, the knowledge body and the spirit can not be harmed.

I say it all the time in class "total body relaxation is the only anti-dote to stress." Most all of what I am learning is not what postures to do if you have a backache or high blood pressure (although that is included) but how to get all the layers of your being relaxed. There are some very powerful techniques that I can't wait to share with you all. The good news is that much of what we do in the restorative class are techniques I am learning here. But that is only the beginning.  There is so much more! When we learn how to calm the mind, slow the breath, and relax the body we penetrate into the layers of our being and release toxic tension that may have been stored for years or may have manifested as disease.

This is the yoga therapy that I am learning in India.  Techniques that are thousands of years old that are useful today.   Even more impressive is the fact that not only are they relevant today but how much they are NEEDED by everyone.  We all have some need of healing even if it's not in our physical body.  I could go on and on about this but two power shortages (oh India!) and another class to go to in five minutes means I have run out of time. Be well and be happy!