Neurocircuitry of Nosis

I am in his class at least every other day. The most intriguing yoga teacher I have found here in NYC, Dechen Thurman. Generally he closes class with a ten minute seated meditation. At times we sit in silence, and other times he rambles on as we focus on the breath or third eye center. This particular night was one of those ramble-on nights. I deeply enjoy his monotone babble, it affects me much more than I realize, as I sit in a puddle of sweat from the last hour and half grueling vinyasa practice. During his conversation with himself, this particular evening, Dechen said something along the lines of,

“How many of us remember things how we want them to be?...

You are retelling a story to a friend, and you are excitedly explaining a confrontation you had with a co-worker. You say, you said this…and then your co-worker said this… and then you wanted to say this, but you didn’t. When you retell your friend the story you tell it as if you did say that awesome comeback, and the tone of your voice implies ‘TAKE THAT! HA!”

I huge smile came to my face, my yoga teacher just called me out! I have most certainly done that. I never mean to lie or embellish the story, but in the heat of the moment the rewritten story just comes out of your mouth as truth. What is this all about? I didn’t even have time to consciously edit the story. My mind selected the edited version, as if it really happened. “In a sense, when we remember something, we recreate a new memory” Johnson pg. 46. I rewrote history as I was reliving the story and telling my friend all about it. “Some scientists now believe that memories effectively get rewritten every time they’re activated, thanks to a process called reconsolidation.” Johnson pg. 46 What does this mean about my memory? How did the event really go down, if each time I remember a previous life event, I experience something different? How credible are my faculties of perception, or even my recollection of perception? For instance when remembering a previous love relationship, or a horrific event in the past we can experience physical sensations in the body from the remembrance of this memory. If we rewrite memories, do we have the mental power to rewrite our associations to the past? “Memories transform our perception of the present, but the process is even more nuanced and layered than that: reactivating memories in a new context changes the trace of memory itself.” Johnson pg. 46.

Memories and leaned behaviors affect how we interact with the world in the present moment. Our associations with the past is exactly who we are. Every time we relive the stimulus retracing the neurocircuitry of a past event, it becomes reshaped because of the existing subtle differences in our mind, body and environment. If these two ideas hold true, then we have the power to simulate the memory of a past event and change our associations by controlling the present stimulus that is filtered through our sense organs and brain. Sounds like a bazaar matrix-like sci-fi experiment. The baffling thing is spiritual seekers, monks, and sages have been activating this same concept through meditation and spiritual practices for thousands of years.

Yasodhara Ashram is a magical place situated in the West Kootaney’s of British Columbia on Kootaney Lake. The ashram’s founder a female of the Saraswati lineage, Swami Sivananda Radha. Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, her Guru told her to return to the west and communicate the truth of yogic teachings to westerners. With no money, and no plan she left India to live the words of her Guru. While living at Yasodhara Ashram in 2009 I learned a walking meditation tactic called The Straight Walk. The guidelines that outline the practice of the straight walk are vague for a reason. The practitioner has optimum space to observe the mind and body. Start at point A and walk to point B. Turn your back at point B, and then walk back to point A. The object is to walk towards, and then away from ‘something’, while observing how the mind and body interacts in the space between point A and point B. The walk takes place in intervals determined by the practitioner; five-minute walk between the points, and then a five-minute free write of your experience. Repeated as many times as the practitioner sees fit. The yogi becomes the scientist and the experiment simultaneously.

My name is Susan Ashley Hunt, and I am a recovering bulimic. I avoided therapy at all costs throughout high school and college. I convinced myself it would not work for me, and I had to heal myself. I was living with my parents, and at a very low moment about three years into the emotionally sick habit, my mother found food and purge reminisce in my toilet boil. I hadn’t cleaned it well enough, and she noticed when she was in my bathroom. With nowhere else to turn she threatened to kick me out of the house and put me in a rehabilitation center. I slowed the habit down, in order to not be caught again until I went back to school. I graduated college, unhappy with a distorted view of my reality and myself. Yoga and its healing power lead me to Yasodhara Ashram, to live and participate in yoga development course.

Swami Sivanada, a resident teacher at Yasodhara Ashram described the straight walk with clarity and then said, “Now go do it.” As I ran to a quite place, I knew exactly what I was going to walk towards and away from. Point A would be a healthy, happy, smiling version of myself. Point B would be me, on my knees, with my head over the toilet, bottom of the toothbrush down my throat, purging with tears running down my face. Johnson points out the process of memory recollection is layered and very complicated. That was most definitely the truth, all I know is when times get rough I turn to binging and purging. It is the action that satiates my mind, when layered conflict, and undecipherable emotions arise in life. This is precisely the reason I chose the situation for the straight walk. Here I was in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, confronting the biggest issue in my life. I visualized the memory, reliving it, in a controlled circumstance, where I gave myself the space to observe.

The hour walk was filled with strong sensations, epiphanies, low points and an array of emotions.“Conscious control over the emotions is weak, emotions can flood the consciousness. This is so because the wiring of the brain at this point in our evolutionary history is such that connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.” Le Doux, pg. 19. Reliving the purging memory in a different stage of life, delegates the power of association to the cognitive system of JUDGEMENT FREE AWARENESS. As the scientist, I was conducting a controlled experiment, and this time the variable was not being overwhelmed by emotions, the variable was the present moment. As I walked I let myself feel, digest and understand what drove me to binge. As I walked toward a happy thriving image of myself I wired my brain to develop a healthy self-image. Walking between these two points demonstrated the progression that lead to each state, giving me the power recognize either mental trajectory in the present moment. The straight walk allows the emotional systems and the cognitive systems to function in equilibrium. Restoring the power of choice, we have the choice to choose who we are in every present moment. Who we are no longer is has to be dictated by associations to the past. All we have is NOW.

By: S. Ashley Hunt

Check out these books and links:

- Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life By: Steven Johnson

- The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life By: Joseph LeDoux

- Link to Straight Walk Workshops @ Yasodhara Ashram

http://www.yasodhara.org/courses-retreats/

A Blind Date With My Yoga Mat

Life became this balancing act of knowing myself as a social being in one out dated context, and who I wanted to be in a social sphere from here on out. Of course always factoring in room for change and development in a cyclical approach, which is easier said than done at times. It became a battle in my mind of what acquired traits and karmic attributes to utilize in what moment. I am sure we have all had this experience in many differing contexts, and generally each moment calls upon different aspects of self. How we make that choice is pulled from a storehouse of synthetic knowledge if we do not act from a place of awareness.

For example going on several first dates with different people. So much is happening, your mind and body are exposed to thousands of different stimuli and your discriminating faulty prompts you to respond differently in each situation. If you were sitting across the table from your date at a five star restaurant, sipping champagne you generally would not slouch with your legs open and itch your armpit. If you were at a baseball game with a date and he was throwing back beers yelling at the catcher, you might feel more inclined to slouch with your legs open, and have a field day with an endless supply of hotdogs. Which is the better date? What scenario do you have more fun in? The answer changes of course.

Does this mean you morph into a different person at every moment? Does whom you are depend on the context? A back and forth interplay, where each influence is equally valid, and asks the psyche to evolve accordingly. What if we studied the cross-cultural development of yoga with this methodology? Eastern, Western, ancient, and modern influences are all equally applicable, and how did these influences shape one’s own practice of yoga?

But even in the first date scenario, there are parts you that act as adhesive, they hold you together, they hold you up as a human, they make you who you are. The practice of yoga in a modern context is exactly the same way, how can we enlighten ourselves of yoga’s innate core, by further understanding it’s simply complex evolutionary process. My thought is shedding light upon what formed the entity we call modern spiritual yogic practice will allow a practitioner to truly adhere to the philosophical pillars that support yoga. With this encompassingly exclusive knowledge the way yoga is taught in North America may even change as well. If modern society were aware of the multi-dimensional factors at play in the process of practicing yoga, could we practice with more authenticity, highlighting yoga’s transformational core? This question alone has prompted me to examine the history of modern yoga, in order to develop my own self-practice and teaching methods. Right now North America and Yoga were just set up on a blind date, and it has not quite been decided if a second date is in the cards. We just aren’t aware.

Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program

David Life: Jivamukti Master Class Jan 2011

The 841 Broadway street doors of Jivamukti open to a wide range of students, men, women, artists, celebrities, college students, all ages and races. Students slip off their shoes in a “fur free zone”, and quickly turn the corner to the three large studios. Attempting to get into the studio a few minutes early to claim their space and arrange their mat and props. The downtown studio that I frequent is a picturesque scene of yoga in North America. A booming business, no doubt, every class filled offered almost every hour of the day, the karma yogis (class check-in volunteers) at the desk always asking if you would like to renew your class package.

Sharon Gannon and David Life the founders of Jivamukti Yoga have always been on my radar. I enjoy the rigorous vinyasa classes offered at the downtown studio, and I lived in Woodstock, NY last summer where the American guru’s call their yoga ranch home. This January was the first time I had ever taken a master class from the founders of the Jivamukti method. My thought is we meet a teacher, when the time is right in both of our lives. At that point our karmic attributes have met on a plane of equilibrium. I have something to learn from that teacher, or from my own experience of the teacher’s teaching.

Before entering the master class with David Life, I knew I was carrying previous ideas and baggage about, what is Jivamukti yoga. I clearly had formulated these assumptions about the practice, and the studio, I often attend when I become unmotivated in my own self-study. My clever and tricky mind immediately imposed these concepts I had formed about the downtown studio, and the Jivamukti method, upon its founders before I had even taken a class with David Life himself. As I looked around at the other yogis in the class, most of them wearing “yoga culture” Jivamukti logo tanktops, chatting and rubbing china gel on their necks, thoughts swirling around in my head…

“He must be very charismatic to have this much of a following!”

“Maybe he and Sharon aren’t charismatic at all, just brilliant business minds”

“I thought Guru’s had to be enlightened beings, and here I am in a group of over 100 people that are calling this man, their guru, or have taken him as their teacher.”

“Is he enlightened?!?!? No, I do not think so, he doesn’t look like it. WOULD I EVEN KNOW? ”

“He looks like Steven Tyler hopped up on pranyama”

“Look around Ash, see what everyone else is doing, do you even feel comfortable here?”

I was very disoriented for the first twenty minutes of the three hour class. As I began to tune into my own practice, acknowledge my mental state, and focus on my ujjayi rhythm I began to more honestly interpret my experience, and the teachings of David Life. Inhale upward facing dog, exhale downward facing dog. David’s raspy rock star voice and thumbing reggae beats were passing through my physical form and I no longer was looking around frantically trying to answer what seemed to be a pressing mental dialogue. The asana class was basic and beautifully focused. Often Jivamukti teachers instruct a fast paced, intricate flow of inversions, arm balances, binds, challenging standing poses, followed by a serious of heart openers. David’s class, centered and challenging. He called upon each of us to explore our alignment, right down to the pinky toe. He was not directing the class in terms of right and wrongs but rather encouraging adjustment that deepens one’s own understanding of their body and mind in the posture. He emphasized the subjectively of practice, each body has a different expression of an asana, that facilitates one’s own well being and self-transformation.

After the consecutive sequence of asanas ending with a music filled savasana and a warming heart mediation. We all gathered around the center podium, where David called upon students with differing body types to demonstrate the same posture. As he pointed out points of resistance in his students bodies, minds, and psyches he kept a light-hearted, engaging, somewhat sarcastic dialogue with the entire group. Laughter and learning weaved itself in and out of the visual demonstration of asana.

With the time reaming David opened the floor for questions and discussion. It always baffles me when students get up and leave class right before savasana. To me that’s the culmination of the class. Here we all are open, receptive and inquisitive and David has opened the floor for us as students to engage in a conversation with the man thousands of American yogis call their “teacher”. A little under a half of the master class began to pack up their mats and props and headed out. That is like walking out on savasana! Who wants to miss utter relaxation, or a heart to heart conversation with a teacher? On the upside it left a more intimate group to engage with David. This is the point where I truly saw David Life communicate and live the teachings I have heard being communicated at the downtown Jivamukti studio. I had seen him talk the talk through advertisement, kirtan recordings, teachings, the studio itself, other Jivamukti teachers, word of mouth and so on. Here I was observing the yoga mogul in person and my scrutinizing eye, and limited perception was OPENED. He walked the walk. The manner in which David spoke with his students removed the Jivamukti method, and David Life from the self-created box I had labeled Jivamukti Yoga.

Many questions where asked of David, everything from confronting attachment, veganism, his take on yoga and its newfound popularity, to dropping acid and celibacy. David Life’s responses were heavy with the vibrations of calm and humble. Yoga scripture and philosophy can appear to be very strict and confining. David’s relaxed, creative and artistic approach to teaching beautifully translated yogic ideas into a relevant sphere. He answered from a deep place in his own heart, from example and years of practice. David empowers his students by exemplifying the relevance of these teachings. The progressive and inspired message David conveyed in that January NYC master class prompted his students to deepen one’s level of self-inquiry, while living responsibly.

Check out the class sched:

http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/fms/index.html

VISIONARY

THOR PART I :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMW9wnzFP8&sns=em

THOR PART II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjQe-GuRdPY&feature=related

the peep hole

THE PEEP HOLE

Objective observation of the internal leads to an objective view of the external resulting in balance, equilibrium and happiness. Each of us is responsible for our own happiness. Change the view of the self and one changes their relationship to their own reality. How we see the rest of the world is how we see ourselves. Uplift your own well-being and uplift the entire globe. Most of us are completely unaware of the circumstances, judgments and perceptions we are react from. When the cloud of ignorance is thick it obstructs the individuals discriminating faculties. The cloud of ignorance becomes denser the more we look outside of ourselves and take on concepts and ideas created by others. This ignorance becomes a prison, and we loose control of our own lives and the power of choice. We can no longer manifest positive future circumstances and become the people we want to be. We are all witness to the cloud of ignorance that creates darkness.

How do we lift this cloud? Only with sustainable effort. It takes 21 days to make and break a habit, to form a new path of synapse connections in the brain. Commit to do some simple thing a day, for 21 days... chant, light a candle, sit in silence for 5 minutes or anything that works for your practice. Let the answer reveal itself in the practice you have committed yourself to.

Greener pastures, Really?

Greener pastures, Really?

Constantly being aware of...

The grass is greener on the other side syndrome

The mind is easily dissatisfied, and has an insatiable appetite for MORE

When in reality we have all that we NEED.