Breath Work

A dear friend of mine made a comment today about a link I had posted on Facebook: Yogic Breathing with Seane Corn. I find the breath to be amazing, as I had written in The Subtleties of the Breath. She had stated that she didn't want to do yoga until she lost her weight. She said, "When I lose most of my weight I'm diving into yoga...it simply wasn't designed for fat people."

My response to her was that yoga is available to everyone. It is all about breath and awareness. When we break down our misconceptions about yoga, it becomes accessible to everyone. I remember when I first started getting The Yoga Journal, and one of the first covers I saw was of a woman doing the crow pose.This pose seemed completely unreachable to me. But years later, as I broke down the pose into its smallest of parts, my mind was able to envision how it was supposed to look. Once I got the image and the "feel" of what it would take to do that posture, it began to become more attainable. I am in no way a crow pose expert, far from it, but when I fly in that pose, if I am not mindful of my breath and aware of where my body is in space, I will do a face plant for sure.

So to put a finer point on it, yoga is breath and awareness of our bodies and minds in space and time. Period. The trouble is, remembering that. Namaste.

Mindbody Connection

I am so fascinated with the mindbody connection. I grab everything I can on the subject and read it. I'm waiting for this book from the library: Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by co-author Mark Williams. I heard Mark William's interview on Science Friday and was completely fascinated. What really grabbed my attention in this interview was the discussion on what happens in our brain when we are frantically trying to fit everything into a 24 hour day and what it does to our body and mind. For people who live like that (hand raised here) we are actually in a fight or flight response. Because of this, adrenaline and cortisol are released into our systems to help us escape danger. One can only imagine the adverse affects this has on the mind and body over time.

What I have found is that through meditation, I am more quickly entering into meditative, peaceful state as compared to last year. Makes me wonder how much meditation and yoga I will need to do to reverse the bad effects of these biochemicals on my system.

I would like to add my thoughts on this when I begin reading the book. If you have read this book (or have read another book discussing mindbody connection)  please contribute to this blog.  We each have different and unique perspectives and I welcome as many views as possible. Namaste.