Volume 2

Thank you to all our teachers and their teachers

and their teachers’ teachersand their teachers’ teachers

and all the teachers yet to come.Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

A continual work in progress. Original Front Cover Art By: Heinko Windisch, Germany.

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Table of ContentsPrayer for Higher Learning 6The Point 7

Bony and Squishy LandmarksThe Spine 10Pelvic Viewing 11 Hip Joint 12 Rotators of the Hip 13Sciattic Nerve 14Nerves of the LumbarSacral 15La Psoas 16Little Muscles of the Spine 17Pelvic Floor Maps 18Pelvic Floor Mudras 19Shoulder Joint 20Your Beautiful Neck 22

Into the PracticeGentle Kindness Takes Practice 26Abhyasa and Vairagya 27Becoming a Learner 28The Effort Effect 30What do we tell our Kids? 39Is Love an Art? 40Self Love is the Opposite of Selfish 46

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Table of ContentsTurn on and Tune In Your Senses 52 The Nose 54 Sniff it Out, Sniff it In 56 Smell Data Record 58 How the Nose Works 60 Fragrance of Memories 62 The Tongue 63 Taste Your Food, Taste Your Life 64 The Eyes 66 See More Clearly 67 The Hands 68 Touch Yourself 70 Touch Others 72 The Ears 74 Listen Closely 75

Establish a Safe Base 76Protection Practice Notes 78Eight Limbs of Yoga 82Yamas and Niyamas 83Get to Know Yourself 84From Krishnamurti 85Track the Consequences 86Replacement Words 89Create New Memories 90Possible Reading List 93

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om saha nāvavatu

saha nau bhunaktu

saha vīryaṃ karavāvahai

tejasvināvadhītamastu mā vidviṣāvahai

om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

May we be protected together.

May we be nourished together.

May we create strength among one another.

May our study be filled with brilliance and light.

May there be no hostility between us.

Om peace, peace, peace.

Prayer for Higher Learning

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The Point of this CourseOur time together is meant to be practical. We have three main objectives:

TimeWe must become intimate with and taste the existing fact of Self Love in order to be able to cooperate with Self Love again and again. Much of our time together will be spent in practice to establish the ground in which new learning can occur.

Context Generally, the Western mind loves facts and scientific proof. By understanding some of the neurological and chemical inner-workings of the body, we help remove some of the mystery and perhaps move more towards mastery.

Tools Together we will play with different practices to help form new memories, gain confidence, increase capacity, and align us with Self.

May Saraswati open the channels for higher learning to occur and remove our lethargy and laziness.

The flute of interior time is played whether we hear it or notWhat we mean by “love” is its sound coming in.When love hits the farthest edge of excess, it reaches wisdom.And the fragrance of that knowledge!It penetrates our thick bodies,it goes thought walls.Its network of notes has a structure as if a million suns were arranged inside.This tune has a truth in it.Where else have you heard a sound like this?

Kabir

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Boney and SquishyLandmarks

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Image Source: Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy

The Spine

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Pelvic Viewing

Image Source: Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy

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Hip Joint

Image Source: Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy

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External Rotators of Hip

Internal Rotators of Hip

Tensor Fasciae Latae

Gluteus Medius

Gluteus Minimus

Gemellus superior, Gemellus inferior, Obturator internus, Obturator externus, Quadratus femoris, Piriformis, Gluteus maximus, Sartorius, Gluteus medius, posterior fibers

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The Sciattic Nerve

Images from Google.com

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Image Source: Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy

Nerves of Lumbarsacral

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Image copied from Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy with no permission.

La Psoas

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Rotatores Thoracis Muscles Interspinalis Muscles

Little Muscles of the Spine

Images from neosavina.ivyro.net

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Pelvic Floor MapsFemale

Male

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Pelvic Floor Mudras

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The Shoulder Joint

Images from Google.com

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Image Source: Prohealthsys.com

Your Beautiful Neck

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“Only those who are unwise and self-loving can believe that above them are only hymns...the higher it is, the more

tense.”

~ from Heart Agni Yoga Society

Friend, please tell me what i can do about this worldI hold to, and keep spinning out!

I gave up sewnclothes, and wore a robe,but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.

So i bought some burlap, but i still throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.

I pulled back my sexual longingsand now I discover that I’m angry a lot.

I gave up rage, and now I noticethat I am greedy all day.

I worked hard at dissolving freed, and now I am proud of myself.

When the mind wants to break its link with the world it still hold onto one thing.

Kabir says: listen my friend,there are very few that find the path!

Kabir

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Into Practice

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Gentle Kindness Takes PracticeIn his book, ‘Outliers’, Malcom Gladwell put forth data and research revealing that to be come good at anything takes at least 10,000 of practice.

As a culture, we seem to know this about our sports and arts, but somehow its more difficult to apply to our relationship with ourselves.

I hear all the time, “I’m too tight to stretch,” and “My mind is too busy to meditate,” as if the identity is fixed. And so as long as we think it is, it will be. But as you may have started to notice, everything changes when you bring your attention to it.

The texts present a paradox. They are filled with practices and the simultaneous suggestion that there is nothing to do, everything is fine the way it is. The cosmic joke is that it takes massive capacity to have room for everything as it is, including ourselves.

Self Love will occur spontaneously as a result of your diligent effort towards it. You will be amazed and delighted and also frightened and full of doubt. As yogis we are increasing our tolerances for the opposites and magically we find ourselves in the center. Go forth with vigilant optimism.

Sutras 1.12 – 1.16 address the continual effort towards effortless-ness. This translation and commentary is from Ravi Ravindras, “The Wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide,” 2009.

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1.12 Stillness develops through practice (abhyasa) and non-identification (vairagya).

abhyāsa vairāgyābhyāṃ tan nirodhaḥ

1.13 Abhyasa is the effort of remaining present.

tatra sthitau yatno’ bhyāsaḥ

1.14 Continuous care and attention for a long time establishes this practice.

sa tu dīrgha kāla nairantaira satkāra āsevito dṛḍha bhūmiḥ

1.15 Vairagya is the mastery over the craving for what has been seen or heard.

dṛṣta ānuśravika viṣaya vitṛṣnasya vaśīkāra saṃjña vairāgyam

1.16 The higher vairagya arises from a vision of the Transcendent being (Purusha) and leads to the cessation of craving for the things of the world.

tat paraṃ puruṣa khyāter guṇa vaitṛṣṇyam

Abhyasa and Vairagya

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Becoming a Learner

If we are only rewarded by our achievements, we slowly become non-learners. We begin to avoid the activities that we are not good at and slowly start to shrink our lives.

If we can feel rewarded by our efforts, then challenges and new things become exciting as they offer an opportunity to grow and stretch and live a richer life.

Key ingredients of a yogi are wonderment and willingness. If we approach ourselves with curiosity and amazement, we increase our capacity to hold the opposites.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,

but a habit.Aristotle

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The Effort Effect

ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom’s Premier League. The Rovers’ train-ing academy is ranked in England’s top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promis-ing players weren’t reaching their potential. Ignoring the team’s century-old motto—arte et labore, or “skill and hard work”—the most talented individuals disdained serious training.

On some level, Faulkner knew the source of the trouble: British soccer culture held that star players are born, not made. If you buy into that view, and are told you’ve got immense talent, what’s the point of practice? If anything, training hard would tell you and others that you’re merely good, not great. Faulkner had identified the problem; but to fix it, he needed Dweck’s help.A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck’s expertise—and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success—bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out an-swers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demon-strated or as something that can be developed.

What’s more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she’s sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education and parenting to business management and personal development.

AS A GRADUATE STUDENT AT YALE, Dweck started off studying animal motivation. In the late 1960s, a hot topic in animal research was “learned helplessness”: lab animals sometimes didn’t do what they were capable of because they’d given up from repeat fail-ures. Dweck wondered how humans coped with that. “I asked, ‘What makes a

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

By Marina Krakovsky

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really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other chil-dren may be motivated by the failure?’” she recalls.

At the time, the suggested cure for learned helplessness was a long string of successes. Dweck posited that the difference be-tween the helpless response and its opposite—the determination to master new things and surmount challenges—lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed. People who attributed their fail-ures to lack of ability, Dweck thought, would become discouraged even in areas where they were capable. Those who thought they simply hadn’t tried hard enough, on the other hand, would be fu-eled by setbacks. This became the topic of her PhD dissertation.

Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they couldn’t solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had solved before—and some didn’t recover that ability for days.Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encour-aged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure—and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” Her 1975 article on the topic has be-come one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.

Attribution theory, concerned with people’s judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term “fundamental attribution error” for our tendency to explain other people’s actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped “shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions—why it matters what attribu-tions people make.” Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use.

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She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have children “think out loud” as they faced problem-solving tasks, some too difficult for them. The big surprise: some of the children who put forth lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a challenge.”

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable stu-dents thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a set-back. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confi-dence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personalthreat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory.

Dweck’s next question: what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. “If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable,” Dweck explains.

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Students for whom performance is para-mount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process.

People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an “incremen-tal theory,” and use the term “entity theory” for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete (see previous diagram).

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GROWING UP IN BROOKLYN in the ’50s, Dweck did well in ele-mentary school, earning a spot in a sixth-grade class of other high achievers. Not just any spot, it turned out. Their teacher, Mrs. Wil-son, seated the students in IQ order and even used IQ scores to dole out classroom responsibilities. Whether Mrs. Wilson meant to or not, she was conveying her belief in fixed intelligence. Dweck, who was in row 1, seat 1, believes Mrs. Wilson’s intentions were good. The experience didn’t scar her—Dweck says she already had some of the growth mind-set—but she has shown that many students pegged as bright, especially girls, don’t fare as well.

Tests, Dweck notes, are notoriously poor at measuring potential. Take a group of adults and ask them to draw a self-portrait. Most Americans think of drawing as a gift they don’t have, and their portraits look no better than a child’s scribbles. But put them in a well-designed class—as Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, has—and the resulting portraits look so skilled it’s hard to believe they’re the work of the same “talent-less” individuals. The belief that you can’t improve stunts achieve-ment.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or even particularly smart to learn physics. “The as-sumption was that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did.” But what if you’re raised with a fixed mind-set about physics—or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set itself.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades; students in the control group showed no im-provement despite all the other interventions.

“Study skills and learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an active ingredient,” Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. “If you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope for.”

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‘What makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by the failure?’

The classroom workshop isn’t feasible on a large scale; for one thing, it’s too costly. So Dweck and Blackwell have designed a computer-based training module to simulate the live intervention. Their hip multimedia software, called Brainology, is still in devel-opment, but thanks to early buzz from a Time magazine article and Dweck’s recent book, teachers have begun clamoring for it, one even asking to become a distributor.

Unlike much that passes for wisdom about education and perfor-mance, Dweck’s conclusions are grounded in solid research. She’s no rah-rah motivational coach proclaiming the sky’s the limit and attitude is everything; that’s too facile. But the evidence shows that if we hold a fixed mind-set, we’re bound not to reach as high as we might.

ALTHOUGH MUCH OF DWECK’S RESEARCH on mind-sets has taken place in school settings, it’s applicable to sports, business, interpersonal relationships and so on. “Lots and lots of people are interested in her work; it touches on so many different areas of psychology and areas outside of psychology,” says Stanford psychology professor Mark Lepper, ’66, who as department chair in 2004 lured Dweck away from Columbia, where she’d been for 15 years. “The social psychologists like to say she’s a social psy-chologist; the personality psychologists say she’s a personality psychologist; and the developmental psychologists say she’s a developmental psychologist,” Lepper adds.

By all rights, her appeal should transcend academia, says New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who is well known for making psychological research accessible to the general public. “One of the most popular pieces I ever did relied very heavily on work done by Carol Dweck,” he said in a December interview in the-Journal of Management Inquiry. “Carol Dweck deserves a big audience. It is criminal if she does not get that audience.” Perhaps Mindset will help; it was written for lay readers.

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It certainly cemented Tony Faulkner’s belief that Dweck could help the Blackburn Rovers soccer team. Unlike the disadvantaged kids in Dweck’s middle-school study, the Rovers didn’t think they lacked what it took to succeed. Quite the opposite: they thought their talent should take them all the way. Yet both groups’ fixed mind-set about ability explains their aversion to effort.

But aren’t there plenty of people who believe in innate ability and in the notion that nothing comes without effort? Logically, the two ideas are compatible. But psychologically, explains Dweck, many people who believe in fixed intelligence also think you shouldn’t need hard work to do well. This belief isn’t entirely irra-tional, she says. A student who finishes a problem set in 10 min-utes is indeed better at math than someone who takes four hours to solve the problems. And a soccer player who scores effortlessly probably is more talented than someone who’s always practicing. “The fallacy comes when people generalize it to the belief that ef-fort on any task, even very hard ones, implies low ability,” Dweck says.

Her advice for the Rovers rings true for anyone stuck in a fixed mind-set. “Changing mind-sets is not like surgery,” she says. “You can’t simply remove the fixed mind-set and replace it with the growth mind-set.” The Rovers are starting their workshops with recent recruits—their youngest, most malleable players. (Faulkner realizes that players who’ve already earned millions from being “naturals” have little incentive to reshape their brains.) The team’s talent scouts will be asking about new players’ views on talent and training—not to screen out those with a fixed mind-set, but to target them for special training.

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck’s work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company’s talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck’s study showed that praising chil-dren for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motiva-tion (see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

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Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck’s research has implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills. “It’s like the Santa Claus theory of manage-ment: who’s naughty and who’s nice.”

Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck’s work, says Robert Stern-berg, PhD ’75, Tufts University’s dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychologi-cal Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. “If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you’ll never learn on the job, and your whole ap-proach becomes defensive: ‘I have to make sure I don’t screw up.’”

Source: New Yorker

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YOU HAVE A BRIGHT CHILD, and you want her to succeed. You should tell her how smart she is, right?

That’s what 85 percent of the parents Dweck surveyed said. Her research on fifth graders shows otherwise. Labels, even though positive, can be harmful. They may instill a fixed mind-set and all the baggage that goes with it, from performance anxiety to a ten-dency to give up quickly. Well-meaning words can sap children’s motivation and enjoyment of learning and undermine their perfor-mance. While Dweck’s study focused on intelligence praise, she says her conclusions hold true for all talents and abilities.

Here are Dweck’s tips from Mindset:

Listen to what you say to your kids, with an ear toward the mes-sages you’re sending about mind-set.

Instead of praising children’s intelligence or talent, focus on the processes they used.Example: “That homework was so long and involved. I really ad-mire the way you concentrated and finished it.”

Example: “That picture has so many beautiful colors. Tell me about them.”

Example: “You put so much thought into that essay. It really makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way.”

When your child messes up, give constructive criticism—feedback that helps the child understand how to fix the problem, rather than labeling or excusing the child.

Pay attention to the goals you set for your children; having innate talent is not a goal, but expanding skills and knowledge is.Don’t worry about praising your children for their inherent good-ness, though. It’s important for children to learn they’re basically good and that their parents love them unconditionally, Dweck says. “The problem arises when parents praise children in a way that makes them feel that they’re good and love-worthy only when they behave in particular ways that please the parents.”

What Do We Tell Our Kids?

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Is Love an Art?

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Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980) was a renowned psychologist and social philosopher who emigrated in 1934 to the United States, where he held a private practice and taught at Columbia, Yale, and New York University. These excerpts are from The Art of Loving. His other books include Escape from Freedom, Man for Himself, The Heart of Man and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

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Self Love is the Opposite of Selfish

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Turn on and Tune In your Senses

To be a yogi is to be a professional of the internal landscape. And to be a professional of the internal landscape is to become an expert conservationist of prana, our vital and precious life force.

Our senses are one of the primary avenues through which we expend our prana. Most of us give ourselves away to what we are looking at, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting. We are wired to bond to an object or experience with which we are engaging in a positive or negative way, creating an attachment in the direction of pleasure or suffering.

Pratyahara (prut-ee-uh-hara), the fourth limb of Patanjali’s Eight Limb path, is usually defined as “withdrawal of the sens-es”. The practice is derived from two Sanskrit words: “prati”, a preposition meaning away or against, and “ahara”, meaning food or anything taken into ourselves. Together, they create the definition of “weaning away from food.” The suggestion is that one might restrain the external senses from the sources of attachment with the result of reducing the leak of prana.

At first introduction, the suggestion can seem like a recipe for a dull life. Why would anyone want to reduce the engagement with the joys of soft kittens, good food, fresh cut roses, glori-ous sunsets and tender songbirds?

Instead of focusing on the reduction of sensual engagement, we prefer to define the practice of Pratyahara as a turning of the senses inward and allowing these same magical skills of sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell to be employed for connection with the richness within. As we develop a more satisfying relationship inside, employing the natural tendency of attachment in a new direction, we allow the external more room to be as it is. We are less drained away from ourselves. We no longer need things to be a certain way to be pleased. This creates immense freedom and ultimately peace.

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Sense Chakra Place Sense Organ

Motor Organ

Smell Muladhara Root Nose Excretion

Taste Svadishtana Sacral Tongue Urino-Genital

Sight Manipura Navel Eyes Feet

Touch Anahata Heart Hands Skin

Listen Vishudda Throat Ears Vocal Cords

Each of the senses is believed to be linked to a chakra and corresponding sense organ. Chakras are understood to be vortices or hubs of nadis, the channels of the prana. While there are varying accounts of the number and location of the chakras, most maps show a total of seven with five of them connecting to our five senses. Our sense of smell is linked to the nose and the root chakra, muladhara. Our sense of taste is weaved with the tongue and our sacral chakra, svadhisthana. Our ability to see is connected with our eyes and our navel chakra, manipura. Our skin is the sense organ and our hands are the motor organ of touch. Both are extensions of our heart chakra, anahata. Our sense of hearing relies on our ears and is governed by our throat chakra, vishuddha.

The sense organs -- the nose, tongue, eyes, skin, ears -- and the motor organ of the hands can act like doorways into the interior realm and practice of pratyahara.

Here are a few ideas and techniques how we might get started with engaging our sense organs in the external and internal realm. When learning any new skill, we set ourselves up for greater success if we start with broad strokes and obvious exercises that will provide concrete feedback. We do this with an understanding that we will eventually be refining and honing more subtle details and perhaps even letting go of the same techniques that first drew us in.

Again, these are beginning practices in the direction of Pratyahara. Start here and notice what arises. Developing our internal sensitivity with our organs of perceptions is a step towards increasing our capacity to withstand the magnificence that awaits.

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The NoseFor most of us, smell is our dominant and most primal sense. The direct connection between the olfactory nerves and limbic brain bind smell with both our implicit and explicit memories and corresponding emotions. Directly connected to our root chakra, our nose is a key way in which we sense our safety. Consciously and unconsciously, we make decisions to come closer, pause or back off simply because of smell.

The ida and the pingala, two of our three primary nadis, are believed to originate from the root chakra, flow up the left and right sides of the spine, touching six of the seven chakras and descending into the left and right nostrils respectively. Maintaining sensitively to the quality, balance and smoothness of the breath in the nostrils will connect you to the flow of prana within these two channels.

To establish this connection, try this:

1. Find a comfortable seat on the floor or in a chair, or lie on the ground supine.

2. Allow for a few deep breaths, releasing with audible sighs to help yourself land.

3. Begin to attend to the movement of breath in your nostrils. Do not breath with your nostrils, rather, allow the breath to be from the diaphragm or belly and simply feel the flow of the inhale and exhale through the nostrils.

4. Gently move your awareness to your left nostril. As you move your attention to your left nostril, sometimes the breath will follow. If this occurs, stay with it, holding your conscious-ness on the left nostril as you experience the sensation of pri-marily breathing in and out of your left nostril. Stay for least 5 breaths.

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5. Eventually allow the attention to return to both nostrils.

6. Gently move your awareness over to your right nostril. You might notice that the breath seems to follow. You might notice that your right nostril feels more or less open than your left. You might notice nothing. Simply record the data.

7. Eventually bring your attention back to both nostrils. Repeat one more full round.

If you did notice a movement of the breath with your attention between your nostrils, you just found the connection between your mind, prana and breath. Amazing, huh? You can use this new relationship to start to become more fascinated with the subtle realm, which is a sweet beginning to creating desire and attachment to the pleasures within. Once the connection in the nostrils is established, play with connecting the sensations in your nostrils to your root chakra. The root of our muladhara is said to reside at the tailbone and the chakra is believed to flower at the perineum, between the genitals and anus.

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Sniff it Out, Sniff it In

We have our noses in each other’s business all the time. Thank goodness, it doesn’t look quiet like it does at the dog park, but the general purpose is the same.

Dogs have two anal glands in their rectums, which emit a strong scent. Dogs sniff each other’s butts in order to get a whiff of this. The aroma they smell gives them detailed infor-mation about the other dog. The aroma emitted from a dog’s butt tells other dogs vital information about him/her. It tells his/her sex, health status and temperament. Therefore, on a first meeting, two unacquainted dogs know if they want to befriend each other or not. (Source: Examiner.com)

Our sense of smell is connected to our root chakra, muladhara, which is concerned about our safety.

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Below is a list of possible subjects of study. Please feel welcome to discover your own.Step 1: Relax before smellingStep 2: Take several deep whiffs. Relaxing after each inhale and exhale slowly.Step 3: Pause and notice if any emotion or memory arises.Step 4: Smell the object again and do your best to describe the smell (at least 3 adjectives) and the feelings and memories it evoked in you if any.

Practice Smelling

Fresh Cut Orange

Fresh Cut Grass

Fresh Ground Coffee

First Steps into a Bakery

Your Own Cooking

Spoiled Milk

Under Your Arms

Under Your Lover’s Arm

Your Pet’s Fur

A Public Restroom

Your Fingers

Your Toes

Just Cleaned Laundry

Dirt

Rain

BBQ

A Wild Rose

Wild Sage

Inside Your Shoes

Your Soap

Your Yoga Mat

Your Body Lotion

Your child or children

Morning

Late Night

Oak Trees

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Smelling Data Record

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Smelling Data Record

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How the Nose Works

The process of smelling goes more or less like this:

1. Vaporized odor molecules (chemicals) floating in the air reach the nostrils and dissolve in the mucus (which is on the roof of each nostril).2. Underneath the mucus, in the olfactory epithelium, specialized receptor cells called olfactory receptor neurons detect the odor. These neurons are capable of detecting thousands of different odors.3. The olfactory receptor neurons transmit the information to the olfactory bulbs, which are located at the back of the nose.4. The olfactory bulbs has sensory receptors that are actually part of the brain which send messages directly to: * The most primitive brain centers where they influence emotions and memories (limbic system structures), and * “Higher” centers where they modify conscious thought (neo-cortex).5. These brain centers perceive odors and access memories to remind us about people, places, or events associated with these olfactory sensations.

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The olfactory bulb is one of the structures of the limbic sys-tem and a very ancient part of the brain. As mentioned in the previous description of the olfactory process, the information captured by the sense of smell goes from the olfactory bulb to other structures of the limbic system.

The limbic system is a network of connected structures near the middle of the brain linked within the central nervous sys-tem. These structures “work together to affect a wide range of behaviors including emotions, motivation, and memory” (Athabasca University-Advance Biological Psychology Tutori-als). This system deals with instinctive or automatic behaviors, and has little, if anything, to do with conscious thought or will.

The limbic system is also concerned with translating sensory data from the neo-cortex (the thinking brain) into motivational forces for behavior. The limbic system is centrally involved in the mediation between a person’s recognition of an event, their perception of it as stressful, and the resulting physiologi-cal reaction to it, mediated via the endocrine system: Stimuli are processed conceptually in the cortex, and passed to the limbic system where they are evaluated and a motivational response is formulated.

Source: tsbvi.edu/seehear/summer05/smell.htm

The Sense of Smell and the Limbic System

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Fragrance of memoriesHave you ever had a memory cued by a smell? Make a list of the strongest ones.

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Ease is an acquired taste. Becoming more intimate with this ever present nectar will help draw you under the surface to swim in the realm from which the poetry of the mystics emerges.

Try this:

Within a quiet point of your practice, perhaps while sitting for meditation, standing in tadasana, mountain pose, or while sinking into an easy passive seated stretch, draw your awareness to the region of the sacral chakra. The root of our svadhisthana is said to rest in our lower sacrum, the flower opens to our lower belly, below the navel. Try letting your lower belly to soften. Sometimes this will create a corresponding opening and easing in the sacrum. The element of this chakra is said to be water. Connect to a feeling of fluidity, allowing an image of an ocean or lake to help.

If you have never softened your lower belly, the relaxation might feel counter-intuitive at first. Continue with the effort. Now, allow your jaw to soften and even slightly open. Begin to focus on your tongue. Feel the tongue fluffier. Cooperate with the alignment that starts to be revealed through the neck and head.

You will know you are in your Alignment, as the base of your skull begins to feel gooier and your lips feel more sensual. Practice tasting this sensation. Your time spent here will strengthen your hunger for the subtle energies.

The Tongue

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Taste Your Food, Taste your Life

Sweet Salty Sour Spicey (Pungent/Hot)

Bitter Dry (Astrin-gent)

madhura lavana amla katu tikta kashai

Fruits Salt Lemons Chili Peppers Leafy Greens

Pop Corn

Grains Seaweed Limes Coffee

Dairy Soy Sauce Tomato Onions Gin

Pasta Potato Chips Garlic

Carrots Beer

Wine

In the small town of Ojai in Southern California, we give massive amounts of attention to the food we eat right down to the personality of the farmer who’s growing our food. Labels like organic, local, free-range, farm-raised are mating calls. Camps are divided between those that cook their food and those that do not, and within those groups the treatment of honey ignites deep passions.

But we are truly eating all day long are our thoughts. The very common expressions like “Let me chew on that,” or “I need to digest this” or “What’s eating you?” are indicative of this truth.

And because it is ourselves we are thinking about most of the time, we eat our opinions and fantasies of ourselves more than anything else.

The chart below outlines the six recognized tastes in Ayurve-da. ‘Umami’ is a culnary taste for savory. Do you know your taste preferences? Do you put Tobassco® on everything? Is salt a food? Do you like your coffee black or with crème and sugar? Is there a taste you avoid?

By noticing your taste preferences, you might find a parallel with your thoughts or that your eating is an effort counter-pose your thinking.

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1. Make a list of your most favorite foods.

2. Make a list of foods you do not like and/or do not seem to like you.

3. Do you notice preferences within certain taste groups?

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The anatomist Gil Hedley suggests that our blood flow passes through our eyes every 2 hours. Possibly this means that our mood as we look outside of ourselves flows back through us. Does it make sense that the judgment, criticism and fixing we offer with our eyes externally, is also how we are seeninternally?

During your daily life, play with gazing more lovingly upon your visual surroundings. If helpful, deliberately soften your focus. The eyes will actually feel softer. The tension in your temples will dissolve and your forehead will smooth out.

Try this now with your hands. As you first look, the temptation is to list what is wrong. Allow for a few deep breaths to create some space and look again. Appreciate all that your hands allow you to do. Writing, cooking, gardening, eating and caressing would all be much more difficult without your hands. Practice seeing your hands more clearly.

The eyes are the sense organ of the Will. Perhaps if we strengthen the agni, fire, and align the Will with the Heart, we will be able to see with our Hearts.

Everyone spoke of how beautiful Ramakrishna’s Eyes were. His soft open eyes were beautiful because of Who he was allowing to see through them.

With whom do you feel most clearly seen? What does it feel like to be seen?

The EYES

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See More ClearlyWe are practicing yoga to see more clearly. Patanjali calls our blindness “avidya”, or ignorance. The literal translation of avidya is “not seeing clearly.”

The eyes are also tied into the limbic system and slowly over time, if no effort is made, we can only see what we have already seen.

“The superior colliculus in the midbrain, another nodal point of neuropeptide receptors controls the muscles that direct the eyeball, and affects which images are permitted to fall on the retina and hence to be seen.” (Pert, 147)

Or as Umberto Eco said, “All things appear to us as they appear to us and it is impossible for them to appear otherwise.”

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While technically, according to the yogis, the skin is the sense organ of the heart chakra, the hands are how we do our hearts work in the world. The rumor is that thirty percent of our brain neurons run into our hands, so the potency in this region is a useful starting point on the way to feeling the entire surface area of our skin.

1. Sitting at a desk or table, place your hands, palms down on the surface in front of you.

2. Close your eyes, allow your breath to slow and notice the feeling tone in the hands. Spend at least 5 breaths here.

3. Now, turn the palms up. Notice the feeling tone of the hands in this position.

Often, palms down has a focused sense of doing, action, survival. Palms up will often feel more receptive, offering, vulnerable. Was this your experience? If so, allow these qualities of palms up to travel back to your heart center. This will encourage a sensitivity and openness. Play with this in your yoga practice. In standing poses like tadasana and warrior 2, allow palms to be open and heaven facing. In seated forward folds, if you usually have palms down, try turning them up. Notice the effect.

Try this while in conversation with others. Try this if you are in an argument. Begin to map the shifts you can create with simple changes.

The Hands

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Take a photo of one of your hands, print and paste here. Or, if inclined, draw one of your hands here.

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Touch Yourself1. Mark on the image where you have pain. Describe as clearly as possible.

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2. If you can reach the area of pain, allow your hands to rest on the area for 5 minutes with your attention held steady to the point of contact. Record your experience.

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Touch Others1. Listen to your partner describe his/her pain. Mark it on the figure. 2. Agree on an appropriate hold.

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3. Hold your partner for 5 minutes.

4. Record your experience.

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We are generally the center of our universe. We are who we are thinking about, talking to and talking back to most of the day.

Start to hear this continual chatter. Start to record what you are saying all day long. Use these pages to begin this process during this course.

The Ears

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Listen CloselyAs you come into more intimate relationship with your body and mind, how are you speaking to yourself? Can you hear? Are you aware of your words and tone?

For example, if every time you begin to stretch your hamstrings, your internal chorus is, “dumb stupid, tight hamstrings...” a particular response in the body is elicited. Usually, that which is tightest in us and around us is in the greatest support. So, for experimentation purposes, try offering some gratitude and maybe even tender kind speech like, “Oh, poor sweetheart.” As the voices, both negative and positive, begin to quiet, you might begin to hear what these parts of you are actually saying.

We are usually better listeners if we have less advice to offer. Practice letting your jaw slacken as you lean in as if listening to a dear friend. Hear what the rest of you has to offer.

Begin to record what you are hearing.

Poetry is the shimmering, quivering, loving fusion of your neo-cortex with your mammal

and reptile brains. Your tongue is the flowering of your spinal chord.

Peter Lach-Newinsky

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Establish A Safe Base

The TortoiseBoth the Bhagavad Gita and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika use the analogy of a tortoise to invoke the imagery of a safe protective covering in which we can pull in our limbs and retreat.

From the Bhagavad Gita105. Like a tortoise withdrawing its limbs from all directions, a man who has attained equanimity is capable of withdrawing his sense from objects of pleasure at will. 2.58

From the Hatha Yoga PradipikaChapter 1, Verse 10For those continually tempered by the heat of tapa (the three types of pain – spiritual, environmental and physical) hatha is like the hermitage giving protection from the heat. For those always united in yoga, hatha is the basis for acting like a tortoise.

We need a place inside where we can duck and cover. A safe place that holds us. Sometimes it will feel like we are clinging and sometimes it will feel like we are being held.

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If you played tag as a child, there was usually a tree, a phone pole or a hydrant or some object that protected you from being tagged. As long as you were touching it, you were safe. Do you have any memories of this? Do you remember running for the safety and the thrill of leaving it?

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Perhaps when you were a child you had an object of safety like a blanket or stuffed animal. If you remember such an object, please write about it below. Include any memories you have or stories you were told. Do you recall ever losing and finding it?

Safe Object

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Perhaps there was a particular place of retreat for you. Maybe a friend’s house, or your room, or a spot in the woods. Recall where you felt safe as a child and write about it in as much detail as you can remember.

Safe Place

1. Identify a safe object. Something small that you can carry in your pocket. Bring object with you to class.

2. Identify a safe place. Some place easy to get to daily.

Homework

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Protection PracticesAs you discover practices during this course that provide a safe place, record them and make them a part of your toolkit.

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The Eight limbsyama: self-restraint

niyama: right observance

āsana: right alignment or posture

prāṇāyāma: regulation of breath

pratyāhara: turning of the senses inward or withdrawl of the senses

dhāraṇā: steady attention or concentration

dhyāna: wide open awareness or meditation

samadhi: absorbtion or free attention

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Yamas and Niyamas2.30   The yamas are non-violation, truthfulness, non stealing, containment, and non-grasping. ahiṃsā satya asteya brahmacharya aparigrahā yamāḥ

2.31 These restraints are not limited by birth, time or circumstance, they constitute the great vow everywhere. jāti deśa kāla samaya anavachchhinnāḥ sārva bhaumā mahā vratam

2.32 The niymas are purity, contentment, self- disciplines, self-study, and dedication to Ishwara. śaucha saṁtoṣa tapaḥ svādhyāya īśvara praṇidhānāni niyamāḥ

2.33 When negative thoughts and feelings arise, the opposite should be cultivated. vitarka bādhane pratipakṣa bhāvanam

2.34 Cultivating the opposite is realizing that negative feelings, such as that of violence, result in endless suffering and ignorance - whether these feelings are acted out, instigated or condoned, whether motivated by greed, anger or delusion, whether these are mild, medium or extreme.

vitarkā hiṃsā ādayaḥ kṛta kārita anumoditā lobha krodha moha pūrvakā mṛdu madhya adhimātrā duḥkha ajñāna ananta phalā iti pratipakṣa bhāvanam

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Get to Know YourSelfSelf Love can more easily occur when we start to actively engage with more parts of yourself. Be like a Yogi Scientist and simply record the data. The point here is not to be good. The point is to become AWARE. And as we become aware, there is naturally transformation.

1. Record Your ActionsAt the end of the day, reflect back and write down what you did. Begin to create a relationship with your actions. This will start to al-low you to become more mindful of what you are actually giving your time to.

2. Record Your SpeechMore subtle than the actions, can you become more aware of how you are speaking and what you are speaking about. At the end of the day, recall conversations. Remember the topics and tones.

3. Record Your Thoughts and EmotionsEven more subtle, can you begin to be tuned into what is occupy-ing your thoughts and emotions. These are so weaved together, it is easier to begin with them as dance partners.

4. Engage With Your DreamsYou might not dream, but when and if you do, start to write them down. The more attention you pay to your dreams, the more likely they are to pay attention back. When the conscious rests, the uncon-scious can come to the surface. You will meet parts of yourself you were unaware of. This is an easy and relatively safe place to begin to make friends with the range within you.

We cannot really interpret our own dreams as we will see them through the smallness of our conscious mind. If you do not already work with a Jungian Therapist, we suggest picking up a copy of Rob-ert Johnson’s Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.

5. Learn A New SkillThere is something that you have always wanted to do but don’t know how. Take that pottery, painting, writing, surfing, or blacksmith class. Practice being a beginner and learning. Observe closely.

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If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on.

Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down—which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words....

Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly....

Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized.

Writing down what one thinks and feels, one’s desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding.

From Krishnamurti

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Track the ConsequencesUntil the prefrontal cortex forms, we do not have a firm grip in the consequences of our actions. This is one of the roles parents play while we are children. Jail, hospitals and institutions play the role for us as adults.

There is less external correction for our speech and thoughts. These require more self-restraint on our part. Increasing our sensitivity to the relationship of cause and effect (karma) in all three areas, helps us align with our Correct Course. The closer aligned you are with your Center, the faster the cycle of cause and effect. This is part of becoming Self Responsible. You can’t get away with deviant behavior.

Allow these questions to help you identify what you are actually nourishing. All can be answered with “It depends.” They will be more useful if you can recall specific memories and play with experimenting from scratch. Add your own questions to answer.

ActionAction is our most obvious feedback loop and the consequences are usually readily available.

1. How does it feel to sit in front of a computer all day?

2. How does it feel to take a walk or run?

3. How do you feel after a yoga practice?

4. How do you feel after headstand or other challenging posture?

5. How does it feel to retain your inhale for 6 counts?

6. How does it feel to focus your attention on your heart center?

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SpeechOur thoughts are given a denser vibration when we speak them. Perhaps even more concrete when we write them.

1. How does it feel to sing?

2. How does it feel to tell someone you love that you love him or her?

3. How does it feel to prove that you’re right?

4. How does it feel to send a clever email?

5. How does it feel to teach a yoga class?

6. How does it feel to fib a little?

7. How does it feel to gossip?

8. How does it feel to restrain cruel words?

9. How does it feel to yell at the driver in front of you?

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ThoughtsThoughts are the most sublte of the three to track. They can seem so private and harmless.

1. What does worry feel like?

2. What does an insight feel like?

3. How does it feel to tell yourself you need to lose weight?

4. How does it feel to fantasize about a new job?

5. How does it feel to pray for someone else?

6. How does it feel to think about stopping smoking?

7. What does intuition feel like?

8. When you go over a past coversation in your mind, how are you feeling?

9. When you practice a planned future conversation, how are you feeling?

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Replacement WordsHow we speak of our life matters. Here are some replacements that we have found helpful.

Replace ‘but’ with ‘and’.Replace ‘random’ with ‘magic’.Replace ‘coincidence’ with ‘synchronicity’.Replace ‘I had a thought’ with ‘A thought came in’.Replace ‘I am angry’ with ‘I feel angry’.

Do you have any that you have found useful?

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Create New Memories“The stability of an individual’s mind – what we know as iden-tity – exists only because some neural pathways endure. The plasticity of the mind, its capacity to adapt and learn, is pos-sible only beauces neuronal connections can change. The physiology of memory determines the fate of those malleable nodes. It lies at the heart of who we are and who we can be-come.” (GToL)

“Perception activates the same brain areas as imagination. Perhaps for this reason, the brain cannot reliably distinguish between recorded experience and internal fantasy.” (GToL)

“A problem cannot be solved from the same level at which it orginated.” -- Einstein

Record your insights and fresh understandings during our time together here.

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Kundalini Tantra, Swami Satyananda Saraswati, 1984.

Moola Bandha: The Matster Key, Swami Buddhananda, 1978.

Molecules of Emotion, Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., 1997.

A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, MD, Fari Armini, MD, Richard Lannon, MD, 2000.

In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, Peter A. Levine, PhD, 2009.

The Yoga of the Nine Emotions, Peter Marchand, 2006.

Ayurveda and Marma Therapy, Dr. David Frawley, Dr. Subhas Ranade, Dr. Avinash Lele, 2003.

The Wisdom of Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide, Ravi Ravindra.

Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy, Robert A. Johnson, 1989.

Mirrors of Transformation: The Self in Relationships, 1995.

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., 2011.

Incognito, David Eaglemen, 2011.

The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm, 1956.

Kabir: Ectastic Poems. Translated by Robert Bly, 2004.

New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, Mary Oliver, 1992.

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes us Human, V.S. Ramachandran, 2011.

Cultivating Stillness: A Taoist Manual for Transforming Body and Mind. Translated by Eva Wong, 1992.

Possible Reading List

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