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 The physical dimension of health enhancing principles in yoga by Gregor Maehle Yoga is known in the western world for it's various health benefits. Before I explain what they are and by what means they are achieved I will place the health aspect of yoga into its wider context. Yoga originated from India and artefacts displaying performance of yogic postures (asanas) are in excess of 5000 years old. The Indian tradition itself, however, views yoga to be much older than that. Yoga, although at this point already several millennia old, was codified by the ancient seer Patanjali, who is thought to have lived after Buddha but before the author of the Bhagavad Gita. Patanjali is often placed around the second century BCE . Indian tradition attributes to Patanjali a text on medicine called Charaka Samhita and one on Sanskrit grammar, called Mahabhasya , but the one concerning us here is the Yoga Sutra, who is today looked at as authoritative by all schools of yoga. In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali defines yoga as being the stilling of mental activity . Only then, when the mind is stilled, says Patanjali, can the yogi gain the view of the witnessing or the conscious entity , understood to be the sacred, eternal self by all schools of Indian thought. When this view is permanently obstructed through mental activity, one remains under the sway of, or more dramatically, under the tyranny of the mind. To end this tyranny Patanjali recommends the practice of the eight limbs of yoga. Of the eight limbs described by Patanjali, two are of physical nature, namely asana (posture) and pranayama (breathing exercises). These two limbs dominate the view, which western observers have of yoga. Although only a small part of the traditional system of yoga, I will confine myself to the description of these two limbs only. Patanjali also lists various obstacles of yoga , many of which have a physical dimension as well as a mental one. Again, here I will only address the physical obstacles. The obstacles that have a physical dimension are sickness, rigidity, doubt, laziness, sense indulgence, confusion, and the inability to attain and to retain a state. The physical dimension of these obstacles manifests in the form of an imbalance of the bodily humours and an imbalance of the so-called solar and lunar nerve/energy channel (nadis). The humours are vata, pitta and kapha, commonly translated as wind, bile and phlegm . These translations are very coarse, whereas the Sanskrit terms describe extremely complex phenomena, which is lost when using the English terms. These bodily humours are brought into balance by practicing different sequences of yogic postures (asana-s). The solar and lunar nerve/energy channels appear to have a strong correlation to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system respectively, described by western science. Yogic thought identifies the solar nerve channel as being connected to the right nostril and the lunar nerve channel connected to the left nostril. Breathing exercises (pranayama) are designed to balance the amount of breath going through both nostrils and thus to harmonize the solar and lunar nerve channels. Asana I will now go on to describe first posture (asana), then breathing exercises (pranayama), and finally the technique to connect them both, the internal locks (bandha). The term asana is derived from the Sanskrit verb root as, meaning to sit. The English nouns 'ass' and 'arse' also developed from this indo-european original. Asana is used to denote all yogic postures, however, sitting postures used for meditation are the quintessential yoga postures. Many of the above mentioned obstacles to mental freedom, which is the goal of yoga, are manifested in the body, for example disease, sluggishness, and dullness. The body profoundly influences and, if in bad condition, impinges on the functioning of mind and intellect. Through the practice of yoga asana-s the body is made healthy. A healthy body is considered the ideal vehicle on the path of yoga. As the Yoga Sutra explains , every thought, emotion and experience leaves a subconscious imprint (samskara) in the mind. These imprints determine who we are now and who we will be in the future. According to yoga, the body we have today is nothing but the accumulation of our past thoughts, emotions and actions. This defines our body as the crystallised history of our past thoughts and actions. A few examples of how past emotions, thoughts and impressions manifest in the body: Some students of yoga experience a lot of anger on commencing forward bending. This is thought to be due to past anger having been stored in the hamstrings. If we consciously let go of the anger, the memory will be deleted from the tissue. If not, it will, according to yoga, surface in some other form, possibly as an act of aggression or as a chronic disease. Other students feel like crying after intense back bending. Emotional pain is stored in the chest, where it functions like armour, hardening the emotional heart. This armour may be dissolved in back bending. If students consciously let go of their armour, a feeling of tremendous relief results, sometimes accompanied by crying. Extreme stiffness can be related to mental rigidity or the inability to let oneself be transported into unknown situations. Extreme flexibility, on the other hand, can be related to the inability to take a position in life and to set boundaries. In this case, asana practice needs to be more strength-based, to create a balance and to learn to resist being stretched into inappropriate positions. Past hurt, injury and trauma are recorded in the form of subconscious imprints (samskara) stored and believed to be held in bodily tissue in the form of bio-chemical and bioelectrical imbalances. In yoga these imbalances are called 'impurity of the nerve/energy channels' (nadi-s) or often even 'toxins'. Obstructed by impurities, these channels cannot properly conduct impulses and life force (prana). Several hundred different yoga postures are used to purify the various channels, whose number ancient texts put at 72000. In a particular posture many channels are blocked off and their entire charge is released into a single nadi, by which its obstructing impurities are flushed out. There are rumours of ancient texts, which listed groups of postures treating particular ailments. We must consider these texts lost. Most of yogic knowledge was handed down in oral lineages and in India, only now and then teachers emerge that reveal parts of that knowledge to the public. Today curing of particular diseases is not ascribed to only one or a few postures, but more as a common result of practicing many postures. The atmospheric pressure by which the energy current is forced into the nerve channels is established through aids in the form of muscular locks called bandhas while the carrying away of the impurities and the replacing thereof with new life force is performed by a breathing exercise called the victorious extending of breath (ujjayi pranayama). I will treat pranayama first and then go on to bandha. Pranayama The wide range of yogic breathing exercises is collectively referred to as pranayama. Pranayama is a compound noun, consisting of prana and ayama. The Sanskrit term prana denotes life force. Since life force is thought to have an air-like quality it is sometimes translated as inner or subtle breath. In some contexts prana simply means breath or even air. The full term pranayama means extension of prana. Extension of prana stands for life extension in a qualitative and quantitative sense. It is thought to not only increase the life span but also increase vitality. The reason why breathing exercises are given such importance in yoga is that it is thought that the pulsating or oscillating of prana happens simultaneously with the movements of the mind (chitta vrtti). The practice of pranayama therefore is the study and exercise of one's breath to a point where it is appeased and does not agitate the mind. The basic yogic breathing exercise is ujjayi pranayama (victorious extending of the breath). It is practiced by producing a gentle hissing sound through slightly contracting/closing the epiglottis as one breathes. The epiglottis is believed to function as a valve and by half-closing it the body is pumped up with prana (life force). The various asana-s (postures) are used to become aware of all areas of the body. Were awareness goes, so the traditional teaching, there goes life force. Chronic diseases are believed to develop where awareness is permanently lacking. The yogi learns to breathe into all parts of the body, an act that is equivalent to evenly spreading the prana throughout the body. The distribution of breath in the torso that yoga suggests is very different from that that other schools of meditation such as Buddhism espouse. Some meditation teachers warn of rigid thoracic breathing and recommend abdominal breathing to relax body and mind. Although yoga does not recommend rigid thoracic breathing it is nevertheless very critical of this suggestion. It believes that the focus on abdominal breathing will not only lead to a slouching posture but also to rigidity of the ribcage. This is due to a lack of exercise of the intercostal muscles, which in turn blocks the flow of blood and life force in the thorax and opens the way to coronary disease and cardiopulmonary weakness. The slouching appearance is due to a relaxation of the rectus abdominis muscle. This slouching makes the belly soft and promotes abdominal breathing. Furthermore, relaxation of the rectus abdominis allows the pubic bone to drop, leading to an anterior (forward) tilt of the pelvis, which produces a hyperlordotic low back, commonly referred to as a sway back. This in turn lifts the origin of the erector spinae, the main back extensor muscle. Thus shortened, the erector spinae loses its effectiveness in lifting the chest. The chest collapses, leading not only to a slouched appearance but also to a rigid, hard ribcage, which prevents the thoracic organs from being massaged during breathing. This lack of massage and movement of the heart and lungs lowers their resistance to disease. The compensatory pattern, leading to a sway back, an anteriorly tilted pelvis and a collapsed chest, is one of the worst postural imbalances, and its main cause is favouring abdominal breathing and the resulting weakness of the abdominals. I will later briefly return to adverse effects of abdominal breathing when I cover its effects on the abdominal cavity under the heading bandha. Yoga uses actively both the abdomen and the thorax to breathe. To describe this method of breathing D. Coulter has suggested the term 'thoraco-diaphragmatic breathing' . The intercostals are here exercised through actively exhaling. The air is literally pumped out of the lungs until all that remains is the respiratory rest volume, the amount of air left after a full exhalation. The aim is to breathe more deeply so as to increase vitality. The way to achieve this is not by inhaling as much as possible but by first exhaling completely in order to create space for the new inhalation.
Yoga sees these toxins to be held and stored in the body in 'stale', 'dead' areas where there is only a small amount of oxygen, often around the joints or in adipose tissue. The build-up of these toxins - a literal energetic dying of certain body areas long before the death of the entire organism - is thought to eventually lead to chronic disease. The build-up of toxins and the simultaneous depletion of oxygen and life force in certain tissues are believed to be the number-one cause of chronic disease. By breathing deeply, exhaling accumulated toxins and inhaling oxygen, the yogi attempts to return the body to its original state of health. Bandha After explaining the concept of posture and breathing exercises, I will show next how yoga connects these to achieve one workable unity. The connecting link is bandha. The term is related to the English words 'bonding' and of course 'band'. In yoga breath and posture and the awareness of these are bound together using muscular locks called bandha-s. The first bandha is called Mula Bandha, which translates as 'root lock'. The root referred to here is the root of the spine, the pelvic floor or, more precisely, the centre of the pelvic floor, the perineum. By slightly contracting the pubo-coccygeal muscle, which goes from the pubic bone to the coccyx, an energetic seal is thought to be created that locks prana (life force) into the body and so prevents it from leaking out at the base of the spine. Mula Bandha is said to move prana into the central energy channel, called sushumna. From this action a centring and calming of the mind arises. Traditionally Mula Bandha is also said to arrest the downward flow of life force, which increases with age and invites death, disease and decay like the withering of a plant, and convert it into an upward flow that promotes growth and vitality. The second bandha is Uddiyana Bandha (lower abdominal lock). The lower abdominal lock consists of lightly contracting the transverse abdominis muscle, which runs horizontally across the abdomen and is used to draw the abdominal contents in against the spine. To successfully switch on the lower abdominal lock, it is important to isolate the upper transverse abdominis muscle from the lower part and use only the part below the navel. Doing otherwise impinges on the free movement of the diaphragm. If the movement of the diaphragm is restricted for a long time, aggressive, boastful and egotistical tendencies are believed to develop in the psyche. This runs counter to the spirit of yoga. The lower abdominal lock is used by the yogi to prevent excessive abdominal breathing. Apart from the negative physical repercussions described above, excessive abdominal breathing is seen by yogis to lead to sagging, collapsing abdominal organs with enlarged, weak blood vessels and stagnant blood. A lack of oxygen supply, a decrease in vitality and eventually the development of chronic disease then follow. If the lower abdominal wall is kept firm and the upper wall is relaxed, the diaphragm moves up and down freely and the whole abdomen functions like the combustion chamber of an engine, with the diaphragm as the piston. This produces a strong oscillation of intra-abdominal blood pressure, and it is exactly this mechanism that produces healthy abdominal organs. When the diaphragm moves down and the abdominal wall is held, the pressure in the combustion chamber will rise. When the diaphragm moves up, all the blood is sucked out of the abdomen and blood pressure drops. This strong oscillation of abdominal blood pressure constantly massages the internal organs and develops strong, healthy tissue. I will now briefly look at the subtle mechanics of Uddiyana Bandha (lower abdominal lock). Subtle in yoga means not cognisable through the senses. Ancient yogic treatises describe a so-called subtle anatomy, seen by yogis in higher states of concentration. Uddiyana means flying up. The medieval yoga treatise Hatha Yoga Pradipika states that, because of Uddiyana Bandha, the great bird of prana flies up incessantly through the sushumna. Sushumna is the central energy channel, which lies, albeit in the subtle body, in correlation to the spine and originates at the perineum. It terminates within the head - some sources say at the highest point of the head, but more often it is described as ending where the skull meets the spine. We may call the central energy channel the subtle yogic equivalent of the spinal cord, keeping in mind that although there are similarities between the two, these are not identical. As a result of degeneration the central energy channel is usually dormant; meaning the prana does not flow into it. The sushumna is accompanied by two other nadi-s (energy channels), which are believed to wind around it like the snakes of the caduceus. These are the lunar (ida) and solar (pingala) channels. As stated above already we may look at them as the yogic version of the sympathetic (solar) and parasympathetic (lunar) nervous systems. One needs to keep in mind that this is a rough but functioning working hypothesis, not more. Hatha Yoga Pradipika explains that prana should be directed into sushumna by closing the ida and pingala. The same text states that, by practising Mula Bandha, prana will enter sushumna. We may interpret that as creating a balance between the use of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. If this balance is not achieved one falls, according to yoga, into either the trap of fundamentalism or relativism. Relativism, a preponderance to excess prana in the lunar nadi, manifests in believing all opinions to be true whereas fundamentalism, a preponderance to excess prana in the solar nadi, is seen to surface as taking only ones own opinion as true. Both these conditions are believed to produce serious mental imbalances, which nevertheless stem from a physical root. According to A.G. Mohan, translator of the Yoga Yajnavalkya, another ancient treatise on yoga, the aim of yoga is to concentrate the prana in the body , whereas it is usually scattered. A scattered prana will correspond to a scattered state of mind. According to Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of medicine and sister science of yoga, the mind is the root cause of all diseases. The mental dimension of the health enhancing principles of yoga must be the subject of another study. I have limited myself in this article to the physical aspects of healing though yoga. © Copyright 2007 8limbs Ashtanga Yoga. All rights reserved, |