Flexibility is the ability of muscles and joints to operate in their full range. We are born with this ability, but in most cases we lose it with age.
In the days of hunters and gatherers, people performed the required number of movements every day, which maintained flexibility and health. Now we do not need to move so much, on the contrary, many people are forced to spend half a day in a sitting position.
Even if you are active, by the time you are an adult, your tissues have lost 15% of their moisture and become less elastic.
Over time, your muscle fibers begin to stick to each other, forming cross-links that prevent parallel fibers from moving independently. The risk of injury is growing.
Gradually, our elastic fibers are bound by collagenous connective tissues and become more and more stubborn and rigid.
Stretching slows down dehydration processes by stimulating the production of lubricating fluids in the tissues. Cross-links in the muscles are stretched, which allows you to restore the normal parallel structure of the muscles.
What are we really stretching
Most physiologists believe that increasing the elasticity of healthy muscle fibers is not the most important factor in increasing flexibility.
According to Michael Alter, author of The Science of Flexibility in 1998, individual muscle fibers can stretch up to 150% of their original length before breaking.
This ability to stretch allows the muscles to move in a wide range, sufficient to perform the most difficult asanas. So, our stretching is not limited by muscles.
There are two main scientific opinions about what actually prevents us from touching the floor with our hands. The first school argues that it is necessary to increase the elasticity of connective tissues, the second school speaks of training the nervous system.
The role of connective tissue in the development of flexibility
Connective tissue makes up a large part of our body. It forms intricate networks that connect all parts of the body and divide them into separate anatomical structures: bones, muscles, organs, and so on.
Connective tissue. biology.about.com
In the study of flexibility, we will only deal with three types of connective tissue:
- Tendons. They serve to transmit power by connecting muscles and bones. Tendons have a huge tensile strength, but they are quite sensitive to stretching. By stretching the tendon by only 4%, it can be torn or lengthened so that it cannot return to its normal position.
- Ligaments. A little more tendon can be safely stretched, but not much. They bind the bones within the joint capsule and play an important role in limiting flexibility. It is generally advised to avoid stretching them, as this can make the joints unstable and increase the risk of injury. This is why the knees need to be stretched very gently.
- Fascia. This is the third type of connective tissue and is much more important for the development of flexibility. Fascia account for 41% of the total resistance to movement.
Let's apply this knowledge to one of the basic asanas - pashchimottanasana. This is a forward bend in a sitting position. It stretches the muscle chain that starts at the Achilles tendons, rises to the back of the legs and pelvis, and then continues to the spine and ends at the base of the head.
MyGoodImages/Depositphotos.com As a rule, in yoga classes, this pose is simply fixed for a while - from 30 seconds or longer. While holding the pose, the instructor corrects the students and encourages them to breathe deeply and evenly.
This practice allows you to change the quality of connective tissue plasticity. Prolonged postures cause healthy, permanent changes in the fascia that binds your muscles.
If you hold the pose for a short time, there is a pleasant feeling of stretching the muscles. But this will not necessarily lead to structural changes that increase flexibility.
Julie Gudmestad, Physiotherapist and Certified Iyengar Yoga Instructor
The pose must be held for 90-120 seconds to change the base substance in the connective tissue. The base substance is a non-fibrous gel-like substance that contains connective tissue fibers - collagen and elastin. It is she who stabilizes and lubricates the connective tissues.
How does the nervous system affect the development of flexibility
Along with stretching the connective tissues, most of the work in yoga is aimed at turning on the neurological mechanisms, due to which the muscles contract or stretch. One of these mechanisms is mutual (reciprocal) inhibition.
Each time one group of muscles (the agonists) contracts, the function of the autonomic nervous system causes the opposing muscles (the antagonists) to stretch. For thousands of years, yogis have used this mechanism to facilitate stretching.
To experience the principle of mutual inhibition for yourself, sit in front of a table and gently press the edge of your palm on the tabletop. If you touch the triceps located on the back of the shoulder, you will notice that it is tense. If you touch the opposite muscles - the biceps, you will feel that it is relaxed.
The same mechanisms work in paschimottanasana. When you tighten your quads, the hamstring muscles relax and you can deepen the pose a little.
Why You Can't Stretch
Physiologists, who recognize the nervous system as the main obstacle to the development of flexibility, believe that the key to overcoming the limitations lies in another function of the nervous system - the stretch reflex.
To understand what the stretch reflex is, imagine walking in winter. Suddenly you are stepping on the ice, your foot starts to move. Your muscles kick into action, tensing to bring your legs back into a stable position and regain control. What happens in your nerves and muscles?
Each muscle fiber has a network of sensors - neuromuscular spindles. They run perpendicular to the muscle fibers, tracking how much and how quickly the muscle fiber lengthens.
Neuromuscular spindles. anatomytrains.com As the fibers lengthen, the muscle spindles feel stressed. When stress occurs too quickly or continues for too long, the muscle spindles send out an urgent neurological SOS, activating an immediate defensive contraction.
This is why most experts warn against jerking while stretching. They quickly stimulate muscle spindles, which cause reflex contraction and increase the risk of injury.
Slow, static stretching also elicits a stretch reflex, but not as abruptly. As you lean forward in paschimottanasana, the neuromuscular spindles in the hamstring muscles cause resistance, creating tension in all the muscles you are trying to stretch.
This is why improving flexibility with static stretching takes time: it happens through slow training of the muscle spindles. You train them to take more tension before the nervous system kicks in.
How to improve stretching by exercising the stretch reflex
Recently, neurological techniques have appeared in the West that train the stretch reflex, rapidly increasing flexibility. One such technique is called proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF).
To apply PNF to paschimottanasana, try the following:
- lean forward a little less than to the maximum stretch;
- tighten the muscles of the back of the thigh, trying to push them into the floor;
- hold the tension for 5-10 seconds;
- then relax and try to deepen the asana.
As the muscles of the hamstring contract, tension is released from the neuromuscular spindles, so they send out signals that further stretching is safe.
If you contract and then stretch your muscles in this way, you will find that you are much more comfortable in the position that you considered your maximum stretch just a few seconds ago.
How Breathing Helps During Stretching
The connection between relaxation, stretching and breathing is well known and recognized in both yoga and Western science. Physiologists explain this by the neurological dependence of movement and breathing, known as synkinesis - involuntary muscle contractions that accompany any motor act.
Let's look at this with the example of paschimottanasana. As you inhale, the muscles become stiffer, making it harder to stretch. The abdomen fills with air like a balloon, making it difficult to lean forward.
Exhalation deflates the lungs and raises the diaphragm higher - into the chest. This frees up space in the abdomen, so it becomes easier to bend at the lumbar spine and tilt the chest closer to the hips.
In addition, exhaling relaxes the back muscles and tilts the pelvis forward. In paschimottanasana, the muscles of the lower back are passively pressed.
When your lungs are empty and your diaphragm is pulled into your chest, your back muscles are stretched and you can bend into your deepest pose.
Place your palms on your back and start breathing deeply. You will feel the muscles on either side of your spine tense as you inhale and relax as you exhale.
If you pay attention, you will notice that each breath engages the muscles around your coccyx, at the very bottom of your back, gently moving your pelvis back. Each exhalation relaxes these muscles and frees the pelvis, allowing you to twist at the hips.
Rigid method of rapid development of flexibility
You may have seen a photograph of B.K.S. Iyengar in mayurasana (peacock pose) on the back of a student in paschimottanasana. Or a teacher standing on the hips of a student in baddha konasana (butterfly pose).
Mayurasana (peacock pose). Yoga Asanas Online Such methods can be dangerous for beginners, but when supervised by experienced instructors they are extremely effective and bear striking resemblance to the advanced Western flexibility training methods aimed at rewiring neurological mechanisms.
Sometimes during stretching, a physiological reaction occurs that allows you to suddenly stretch much better than usual. For example, after many years of stagnation, suddenly completely sit on the twine.
This is a neurological switch that suppresses the stretch reflex. While the stretch reflex causes tension in the muscle tissue, the switch, known as the reverse myotatic stretch reflex, completely releases the muscle tension to protect the tendons.
How does he work? At the end of each muscle, in the place where it connects to the tendon, there are sensitive bodies that track the load - the Golgi tendon organ. These bodies react when each muscle contraction or stretch puts too much pressure on the tendon.
Check yourself: raise your leg on the back of a chair. If you can do this, you already have enough stretch to do the splits.
Pavel Tsatsulin, Russian Flexibility Expert
However, using this mechanism is rather risky. To engage the Golgi tendon reflex, the muscles must be under extreme pressure in a fully extended position.
The use of such methods requires the supervision of an experienced teacher who can correctly position your skeleton and establish that your body is strong enough to withstand such stress. If you don't fully understand what you're doing, you can easily get hurt.
Ancient techniques or modern science
A good teacher will tell you that yoga is more than just stretching.
Yoga is a discipline that teaches us to perceive the world in a different way. So that we can give up our attachment to suffering.
Judith Lasater, Physical Therapist
According to Lasater, there are only two asanas: conscious and unconscious. In other words, what makes an asana a posture is awareness, not just a change in body position.
However, stretching is also important for progress in yoga, because the practitioner's plastic body will allow him to better control energy - prana. And there is no contradiction in using the analytical findings of Western science for in-depth empirical knowledge of ancient asanas.
Probably the most influential yogi in Western hatha yoga, Master B.K.S. Iyengar has always encouraged scientific research, advocating the application of rigorous physiological principles to perfect the practice of subtle asanas.
Maybe you are a supporter and think that ancient techniques are enough to develop flexibility and get all the benefits. But perhaps by supplementing the wisdom of the East with the discoveries of Western science, you will be able to advance further in your practice.
“When the mind has mastered maya (illusion),
When your "I" has become still and stable,
When the senses finally fell silent, and the mind threw off these shackles,
Then “I” and “you” are one and the same…”
Adi Shankaracharya(Yogataravali)
The preliminary goal of Nidra is to relax the body and mind. The second goal is to separate yourself from body and mind. We constantly identify ourselves with the body and mind that give us so much anxiety, tension, stress and grief. However, at night, when a person falls into deep sleep, his separation from the body and mind occurs automatically: you are called - you do not hear, they come close to you - you do not see, the bad smell does not bother you, in a dream you forget your name, you switched off from outer life, you are not awake. In the same way, you are absent when you go into the deep relaxation of Yoga Nidra, but here you need to consciously separate yourself from body and mind.
5 kosh
While modern psychologists distinguish 3 layers in the nature of the human mind (consciousness, subconscious and unconscious), we, relying on the teachings of Vedanta and the philosophy of Yoga, find gross, subtle and causal essences in the human personality, which are divided into 5 koshas (or forms) - from the grossest to the most subtle manifestations of life:
- - blood, bones, fat, skin, that is, the pasture of feelings, the grossest level of manifestation.
- - a deeply hidden energy network in which prana (life force or protoplasm) circulates.
- - the activity of the mind.
- Vigyanamaya kosha (astral or soul body)- the sphere of our individual personality, manifested at the astral level, during sleep, that is, various mental phenomena.
- - the transcendental sphere of the human personality, freed from attachment and aversion. The condition is very important, but difficult to explain.
Word "ananda" often misinterpreted as “holiday”, “joy” or “bliss”, because this is really a special state when joy-grief, pleasure-suffering, poverty-wealth, etc. are not realized. Yet in this state one experiences universal awareness known as anandamaya. For the average person, pain or pleasure causes anxiety, his mind goes out of balance. This means that pain or pleasure is a touchstone, a test for a person, but in anandamaya a person does not experience anything like that, because his consciousness is transformed and he has transcended past experiences. Yoga Nidra in the final phase leads precisely to this state, when the vibrations of the unconscious are no longer capable of modifications and the absolute unconscious manifests itself as the blissful body of anandamaya.
Table: 5 koshas represent 3 modifications of mental phenomena
| Kosha or body shape | Psychic Phenomena | Physiological state | Experience as experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annamaya kosha (nourishing body) | Consciousness | wakefulness | Physical body awareness |
| Pranamaya kosha (energy body) | Consciousness | wakefulness | Awareness of physical functions (digestion, circulation, etc.) |
| Manomaya kosha (mental body) | Subconscious | Sleep and dreams | Awareness of mental-sensory processes |
| Vigyanamaya kosha (astral body) | Subconscious | Sleep and dreams | Awareness of mental and causal phenomena |
| Anandamaya kosha (blissful body) | Realm of the Unconscious | Deep dreamless sleep | Awareness is nondiscriminating. superconscious |
Experience of subtle bodies
As interest in gross koshas fades, subtle koshas begin to awaken. If the gross bodies (koshas) consist of physical organs (lungs, heart, intestines, etc.) in which the physiological processes of respiration, blood circulation and digestion take place, the subtle bodies also have their own structure and characteristics. In an extensive system of nadis and chakras (psychic centers), pranic and psychic energies circulate, which form the energy infrastructure that conditions the physical body. Word "nadi" translates as "flow, stream, passage or channel." There are over 72,000 nadis in yogic texts, of which 3 are the most important: ida, pingala and sushumna. They function inside the spinal column: ida governs the left side and controls mental energy ( manas shakti), the entire range of mental and mental capabilities of a person; pingala nadi is responsible for the right side, controlling the vital energy ( prana shakti), on which the state of the physical body and all the processes occurring in it depend; sushumna - the most important nadi - begins to function in the middle passage of the spinal column, if a person awakens an active interest in spiritual life. Yogic texts speak of sushumna as a dormant latent power that governs spiritual energy ( atma shakti). Ida, pingala and sushumna originate in the muladhara, the psychic center located at the base of the spine in the perineum. A creative energy lives here, which, as it were, instantly erupts from here at the moment of its awakening, forming the self-consciousness of a person. This power symbolizes the snake kundalini shakti, sleeping and folded into 3.5 rings. In the male body, the muladhara chakra is located in the perineum between the urinary canal and the rectum, and in the female - in the cervix. Ida and pingala start from 2 points of the Muladhara chakra and then rise up, crossing each other along the central and spine in 4 intermediate chakras and finally meet at the ajna chakra (“third eye”), at the top of the spinal column, behind the brow center. 4 intermediate chakras are: svadhishthana (in the coccyx area), manipura (behind the navel), anahata (in the center of the chest, behind the heart), vishuddha (in the pharynx).
Sushumna-nadi is a direct highway between muladhara and ajna, a kind of ladder connecting the earth with heaven. Unlike ida and pingala, which function in each of us, the sushumna channel and spiritual energy must be awakened. These "narrow gates", "narrow path" and "razor blade" are capable of awakening the Yogi. Such an awakening is the most important event in a person's life.
Penetration into the unconscious
If a person is aware of his physical body, he can be aware of his other bodies - pranic, mental, psychic and unconscious. Such a process of expanding consciousness is offered to you by Yoga Nidra. When you dive into the depths of your being during Yoga Nidra, you cannot fail to notice the different levels of insight.
At first, the realm of the conscious mind is limited to the range between the physical and pranic environment, but if consciousness penetrates further, into the area between the pranic and mental spheres, this will mean that you have entered the realm of sleep and the subconscious in such a way that the thread of awareness is not interrupted, although all your the senses, except hearing, are abstracted. Here there is a penetration of consciousness into itself or the process of formation of self-consciousness, comprehension of the phenomena of the mind, sleep and dreams, as well as sharpening of memory. A further transition from mental to psychic awareness mobilizes all astral and psychic experience, the practitioner begins to perceive higher impulses and contemplate other perspectives. It is at this level that such phenomena as astral projections and the exit of the body into the astral take place.
Although Yoga Nidra brings out and develops such abilities, they are not the goal of Yoga Nidra at all. Rather, these are just side effects. However, there are no prohibitions or restrictions - from a spiritual point of view, all this is insignificant and such astral phenomena can enchant us, as a new toy enchants a child ... In the light of the rising dawn of self-realization, all this soon dims and disappears, just as twinkling stars disappear at the rising of a radiant luminary .
The source of the final decline in interest in astral phenomena lies in the sphere of transition from mental to homogeneous (homogeneous) awareness, when the sphere of the unconscious is exposed, where there is no place for mental fluctuations and ideas, where everything is permeated with the all-consuming rhythm of the unconscious-superconscious Universe that reigns, not limited by any space , neither time nor the individual properties of any person.
The highest goal of Yoga Nidra has been achieved - the luminous unconscious is revealed with the help of the luminous superconsciousness.
There is no such person who would not benefit from yoga, so it is safe to say that it is suitable for everyone. The exception is some diseases in which the benefits of yoga are questioned and its practice can even harm: infections of the brain and spine, malignant tumors, mental illness, acute diseases of internal organs. In other cases, systematic yoga classes normalize all physiological processes in the body, and the body begins to function harmoniously - this is how it works, probably, only in childhood, when nature itself fully helps the young body.
How do yoga practitioners benefit from yoga? When viewed from the side, people sit in comfortable positions and do nothing special ... Nevertheless, work in a static position is serious. In short, by combining breathing with muscle tension and relaxation of the body.
Breathing allows you to control attention and enhances the effect of the asana. Muscle tension sets in motion the deep-lying muscles (passive), and they, in turn, reflexively affect the internal organs, which are simply not accessible in other types of physical activity. And finally, after a good tension, there is a deep and high-quality relaxation of the whole body.
The benefits of yoga for men: a digression into history
In ancient India, yoga, generally speaking, was considered an occupation only for men, as a way to achieve the Absolute, the highest knowledge of oneself and merge with the Creator after complete liberation from the material and purification from karmic activity. To achieve liberation is a man's prerogative.
Human consciousness goes through certain stages of development from the mineral world, continuing with the vegetable and animal, and receiving a human incarnation. Being born, a person also goes through stages of development of consciousness, and, from this point of view, a woman is a certain stage. According to yogic treatises, only women who perform their earthly duties well, serving their husband and family, can acquire the right to be born a man. Further, the evolution of their consciousness continues in the male body, which has much more possibilities.
The gradual development of human consciousness is well illustrated by the doctrine of energy centers in the human body - chakras - and the division into castes according to them. People with a low level of development, satisfying only their own needs, shudras (workers), conditionally live in the lower centers: chakras and Svadhisthana. The consciousness of vaishyus (merchants) rises to the Manipura chakra: in addition to themselves, they already show concern for others, for example, about the family, and produce something for society. In the old days, yoga was allowed from this level.
The next level of the Anahata-chakra is in the caste of kshatriyas (warriors), who devoted themselves to taking care of everyone. They practiced a special yoga aimed at developing strength, endurance, patience and sanity. A lot of Kshatriya yoga has been brought into the current practices, which helps us to stand in the endlessly raging modern world.
The Vishuddha Chakra is developed among the highest caste - the Brahmins (wise men). These are leaders of organizations, public figures, managers, politicians and kings. At this level, consciousness evolves to the understanding that I am a soul and not a body. Having played enough roles of a sudra, vaishya, kshatriya, a person comes to the knowledge of his spiritual nature, and he is prescribed to practice yoga and meditation.
The two upper chakras in the forehead and crown - Ajna and Sahasrara - are the way out of the human consciousness and are responsible for communication with the cosmos. In his development, a man also goes through all these stages. Therefore, here we can talk not just about the benefits of yoga for men, but about the fact that it is the foundation on which this evolution is achieved.
At present, two global problems have arisen before half of humanity, which is made up of residents of industrialized countries. They must be successfully solved for the survival of civilization.
The first is bodily health, or, in other words, the adaptation of the physical body of a person to those new conditions of existence that arose as a result of his own activity. That is - finding balance with the external environment. The second task is the adaptation of human consciousness, formed by a technogenic way of life and directed outward to its inner world, which is called the unconscious. This task is twofold, rather, it is two halves of one task. And if everyone manages to solve it, then the third one will be solved along the way - the problem of human ecological behavior. Because one who has experienced the consciousness of unity with everything that exists, and especially living things, under no circumstances will destroy this living thing, out of stupidity or for fun. Today, thousands of ways and means of healing and maintaining physical fitness have been invented. There are also no fewer methods of gaining - at least temporarily - the balance of the soul, mental stability.
There are also many combined methods. Some of them were taken by their authors from antiquity (and perhaps the majority) and altered in their own way.
This work is an attempt to show that the eight-stage Raja Yoga of Patanjali, with the understanding and proper use of its technology, can be one of the most effective ways to simultaneously solve all three of the above tasks. In order to find the initial balance and create the prerequisites for doshcontact with the One in ourselves, at the beginning a special training of the body is necessary. It makes him clean, strong, healthy and hardy. If I want to perceive the One, then the apparatus of perception must be in an ideal state, which is characterized by the indestructible constancy of the internal environment of the organism. The practice of Hatha yoga - asana and pranayama - solves all the problems of the body and at the same time prepares it for the further development of consciousness. Antaranga yoga works with this part of the problem - pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi. There is no need to invent anything, the yoga method is universal, it is thousands of years old. But to use it, you need to know it. Since the body and psyche grow into each other, the problems of one are always problems of the other to some extent. Adaptation must be achieved sequentially: first external, then internal. Usually this is how it goes. In youth, a person has health, and in the bodily sense he is adapted to the world, if there are no extraordinary factors or circumstances. During this period of life, consciousness dominates, adapting to society. But halfway through life, the landmarks change. The stock of health, which seemed endless, shows its limitations, the body begins to fail, the person is now forced to adapt to his requirements. The old adaptation is lost, it is necessary to create a new one. The same with the psyche. When typical human tasks are generally resolved, the question of the true meaning of life arises. The unconscious turns out to be overloaded with a mass of repressed, littered with "trash" of unburned emotions, unfulfilled dreams, unresolved conflicts. “The one that sits in me” begins to demand his own, and the further, the stronger. You need to have a dialogue with him. And in this condition, not brilliant in all aspects, with not very good health and shattered nerves, a person of mature years has to re-solve the problem of double adaptation. This is a serious problem. Approximately by the age of 40, a person develops habits, a way of life is developed. And to introduce something new into it, connected with the body and psyche, is a great indignation of the familiar. It is desirable that the pace and methods of bodily recovery correlate with the methods of expanding consciousness, so that they do not contradict each other and have the necessary gradualness. Here yoga again has a huge advantage, since it offers a sequential way of working with both the body and the mind, although, in principle, this begins at the same time. To use something effectively, you need to be explained and shown how it works.
But we must somehow take the first step in yoga, right? Who should start moving? Apparently, the one I can control, albeit limitedly, is the body. The shell of the spirit, as defined by Aurobindo.
Many who are at least somehow interested in yoga lack the opportunity to read not that surrogate okroshka of esotericism that all of Moscow is crammed with today, but primary sources with practical comments. They have already been translated, but little and carelessly. It is clear even to a beginner - if he turns to the second volume of the same "Indian Philosophy" by Radhakrishnan - that without preliminary preparation of the body, any attempts at serious spiritual development are fruitless. Moreover, in Russia there is no guru institution. I specifically emphasize: there are no yoga teachers - gurus! And it cannot be, because this is a centuries-old Indian tradition, where did it suddenly come from with us? Everything has to be based on something. Yoga grows out of working with gross matter in order to move on to finer things later. This will be the sequence of development - nyasa.
At one time, I had to learn the basics of yoga on my own skin. Several years of effort, systematic practice, constant reflection on how best to do it, but to no avail. The analysis of particulars yielded nothing. And then I began to guess: there is something in these seemingly understandable actions, postures, body shapes, something that lies outside my usual life experience. Then the question was formulated as follows: how, in fact, do asanas differ from the daily actions of ordinary life? When I answered this question to myself in sufficient detail, much became clear.
The possession of health and a strong body at all times was considered a necessity for those who somehow aspired to the heights of the spirit. Let's say in alchemy: "The requirement for the master to have a healthy physical constitution is quite reasonable, since he acted both through his own essence, and was an absolutely necessary component of his experiment" (C. G. Jung "Psychology and Alchemy", p. 291).
The problem of the quality of the perceiving consciousness is always connected with the quality of the body as its carrier. The body should not influence perception, even if the consciousness is ideally suited for contact with the Highest reality. The unsatisfactory state of our physical shell can significantly distort the perceived. This was already known thousands of years ago to the mystics of Christianity and ancient esoteric systems, primarily yoga.
That is why it is impossible for me to recognize the authenticity of the Living Ethics texts. L.V. Shaposhnikova writes that, while sorting through the archives of the Roerichs, she discovered suitcases of medicines, that Helena Roerich suffered terribly from many diseases all her life. By the way, she never paid attention to the need for special work with the body, rejecting the stupid "Hatha" with her usual aplomb.
Jiddu Krishnamurti also experienced certain costs of such an approach all his life. The same applies to Blavatsky and her theosophical companions.
Although Aurobindo did not practice yoga of the body, but, as Satprem testifies, “for several hours a day he “went for yoga”.” Most likely, he practiced "vipassana" on the movement of the legs.
Vivekananda also broke down on pure spirituality. He did not follow the body at all, and the ecstasies quickly destroyed his physical shell. Earlier this happened to Ramakrishna.
It is impossible to deny the indirect influence of the scientist's physical conditions on his scientific achievements, on the heuristic work of the mind. Illumination can develop in parts in the intervals of remission of any bodily diseases. But for spiritual progress, for the consciousness to own most of the psyche, the full energy of a healthy body is needed, some part of it is indispensable.
The amount of energy produced by the body of an adult is a constant value for this individual. One part of it goes to cover the needs of the body in energy - the work of all its systems requires the consumption of some part of it. Another share is spent on the psyche in general and on the waking consciousness, in particular on the work of the intellect. When the body is healthy, it produces the maximum possible energy and the minimum amount of produced distracts to cover its own energy costs. Everything else can be used to expand consciousness, to meditate and other practices that are extremely costly in terms of energy. If the body is not in order, it produces less energy, and its costs increase to maintain the necessary physical conditions. The remaining amount for going inward and contacting the unconscious is simply not enough. Not only does poor health interfere with perception, makes it distorted, it also creates a kind of “ceiling” for spiritual experiences. In order to turn perception inward and organize the conditions for contact, all possible bodily energy of a person who is healthy in every sense is needed. There are outstanding people for whom this path seems to be open from birth. But they are also limited by the state of the material of the carrier of consciousness. There are fluctuations such as Vanga, but this is a pure exception to the rule. C. G. Jung wrote that sometimes the condition for spontaneity of contact with the unconscious is a pronounced weakening of mental abilities (in Rus' it has always been believed that God can speak through the holy fools). But in this case, even in the presence of contact, there can be no talk of self-knowledge or higher spiritual development. It is clear that the state of bodily health in this case has nothing to do with spiritual progress, which does not exist. Only in the rarest of cases is the spirit able to go without a body, but this is a sign that they will soon be separated.
As for, say, E. Roerich, then, judging by the texts “accepted” by her, the state of the body did not allow her to move deep into herself. Her moralizing and hatred of potential "enemies" of the doctrine stemmed from a banal truth: all positive knowledge about herself was contained in her mind, all negative unconsciousness was projected onto the outside world. It formalized the negative part of the doctrine. You can say this: in the images of the enemies she imagined, she faced the evil of her own soul. Which became the more, the higher the bar of his own infallibility, exclusivity, greatness was raised. Since there was no peace and harmony, then all her enormous potential went into the feverish work of the intellect, the reconstruction of a personal "mirage", a version of the final truth, which she actually did not manage to meet. The Kingdom of God is not found by her, but invented.
In this regard, I would like to quote the words of Aurobindo's associate Mira Richard, who spoke about diseases, “... which are the result of the development of the higher levels of our consciousness and our physical consciousness. This leads to a disturbance which may cause disease, not through the intrusion of some external intermediary, virus or microbe, but by breaking the normal relation of the inner parts of our being; diseases of this kind can be allergies ... as well as mental disorders and disorders of the nervous system. Thus, we are talking about the problem of the susceptibility of matter to the higher spheres of consciousness" (Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or the Journey of Consciousness, p. 113).
Based on the above thought, we can again state that it is impossible to enter the higher states of consciousness with a ballast in the form of an imperfect body. And if it succeeds, then everything perceived will be distorted by the same pathological (or insufficiently energetically provided) state. Moreover, if the rate of change in consciousness exceeds the capabilities of the body, diseases and psychosomatic disorders are inevitable. In other words, there should be external progress in the healing of the body, provided by external means - Hatha yoga - and internal, organized by the methods of Bahiranga - yoga (meditation practice), and these two processes should be interconnected. Because it is impossible to fly with one wing. There will be only development of the body - spiritual progress will not take place, the maximum achievable here is the removal of repressed tensions through the practice of asanas and the initial balancing. If there is only spiritual development without work with the body, sooner or later we will hit the “ceiling”, above which we cannot “surface”, and if we succeed, then the perceived is so distorted that it is worthless. Conclusion: in any variant of spiritual development, the quality of bodily material ensures the quality and level of understanding and self-realization. Or - the achievement of higher states of consciousness.
It is known that meditation existed in early Christianity, it was called "intelligent prayer." What can we find about the body in the Church Fathers?
Basil the Great says: “For some, their bodily weakness is a considerable obstacle to doing mental prayer. If it was good to be relaxed in the body and lie as if dead, then God would have created us as such. If he did not create us like this, then those who do not preserve the beautiful creation of God as it was created sin.
Saint Isaac: "If you force a weak body above its strength, you inflict double embarrassment on the soul."
Saint Seraphim of Sarov noted: “Everyone who wants to go through a spiritual life should start from an active life, because without an active life it is impossible to come to a contemplative life” (how can one not remember: “Hatha yoga cannot be realized without Raja yoga, and vice versa”!) .
In ancient China, it was believed that each person himself is obliged to take care of his body, this was especially expressed among the Taoists. Perhaps partly because their practice is called "Taoist yoga."
"The last stages of yoga require great physical endurance, and there is no shortage of cases where an intense spiritual life overworks the body to such an extent that it leads to its destruction, and therefore the body is the first thing that should be brought under control" (S. Radhakrishnan "Indian Philosophy", vol. 2, p. 313).
"... The body is the starting point of our evolution" (Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or the Journey of Consciousness, p. 119).
“We have to work in our individual body…because this body is just the place where consciousness meets matter” (ibid., p. 116).
“You cannot manage the external without knowing how to manage the internal, for they are one and the same” (ibid., pp. 138–139). I would like to note that this is especially true exactly the opposite.
“The body is the shell of the spirit, and therefore it is the first thing that must be known” (Sri Aurobindo).
"The body has its reasons, unknown to the mind" (B. Pascal).
Chongyam Trungpa: “The body is nothing but a part of our mind. The body is that by which the spirit is freed from the mind.
Professor Günther states: “The body is an embodied possibility. It has no nature of its own, and is open to all possibilities. The body is something that can always become different. It is not an incarnation, but that which constantly incarnates.
Buddhism declared: "There is no world independent of my body!"
Aurobindo argued that there is "a physical mind, the dumbest mind possible."
Sri Ramana called the body: "This is a log..."
Speaking about yoga, Mira Richard said a brilliant phrase: “It seems to me that you can’t fully understand anything until you understand it with your body.” Anyone who has even a minimal understanding and personal experience in the practice of yoga will agree with this statement unconditionally. This is an axiom. There can be no theoretical, abstract knowledge on the topic of yoga. True knowledge will grow only from personal experience. Everything else - books, conversations, films, revelations - is an indirect representation of the subject, information about it. Whatever a person learns from words or books about yoga, whatever he understands - at best it will be only half of real knowledge. Only regular practice of asanas, pranayamas, meditation gives the missing part to the theoretical material, makes knowledge about the subject complete. Exupery said: "To know, one must participate, and this is a difficult school."
Over the past few thousand years, the human body and its brain do not seem to have changed significantly, although "the concreteness and direction of the conscious mind are qualities that the human race has acquired relatively recently" (C. G. Jung "Synchronicity", p. 15). However, the actions of a person in his personal space have remained almost unchanged, even if today we live in apartments, and not in caves. We still get up, sit down, lie down, walk, run, move objects with our own efforts. Each human subject interacts with a certain amount of the material world surrounding him and with creatures similar to himself in order to prolong life, ensure its quality, corresponding to the level of claims, intelligence and physical condition.
If we exclude disease states, satisfaction of natural needs and hygiene procedures, it will be seen that the vast majority of human interests lie outside the boundaries of one's own body. In addition to the branches of science involved in its study.
The shape of the body, its “device” and motor abilities have evolved in the field of gravity. Bodily activity has always aimed at contact with the objects of the surrounding world in order to change them in their own interests. Gradually, in this way, over thousands of years, mankind has created an artificial environment for its habitat - a “second nature”. One way or another, a person studies everything that is around him, but meanwhile “of all the tools it (body - B.B.) is the least understood and the worst treated" (Satprem "Sri Aurobindo or the Journey of Consciousness", p. 110).
The spectrum of typical motor activity always contains the following features:
Movement or movement of the body in space;
Muscular efforts that ensure this movement, and their nervous support, neuropsychic "providing" movement;
Human contact in the process of this activity with the outside world;
The predominant "filling" of consciousness with the surrounding, that is, with out-of-body material.
Consciousness is supported by the flow of information from the outside, this flow is a kind of fuel on which the brain works. The Indian tradition compares the mind to millstones, and if it is left without impressions from the outside, then the millstones will grind themselves. In other words, the vast majority of the life experience of the average person is based on various types of contact with the outside world, its objects, events and living beings. Life experience is the subjective knowledge of each of the varieties, methods and ways of such contact, as well as their consequences, desirable or harmful, and on the basis of this experience, he is able to master new activities. Consequently, there is a standard motor experience of the body, which is associated with many manifestations of human activity, a set of motor stereotypes, automatisms. They allow you to release the mind from excessive control over body movements in standard situations. Such control arises only in the event of exceptional conditions or unfamiliar activities. At any moment of time, as soon as the need arises, the consciousness can "stick" with the movements of the body and control it, it is forced to be drawn into the work of the body.
If everyone knows the typical forms that the body is able to take in ordinary human activity, and its movement occurs in fixed ranges of these forms, then everything is not so with yoga asanas. During the practice of asanas, the body does not move in space in six main directions, but nevertheless it constantly changes:
The position of the limbs relative to the body;
The shape of the body itself;
Points of contact of the body surface with the reference plane;
The position of the body relative to the gravity vector.
In everyday life, every human action has a purpose, we perform all movements to obtain a certain result. The goals are located outside the body (except as previously discussed), and the intermediate forms that the body takes in this case are of no interest to anyone. Asanas are forms that have no destination outside the body. And the movement of the body, which is reproduced by these forms prescribed by tradition, is not directed anywhere. If earlier, in ordinary life, the forms of the body were intermediate and instantaneous, then in Hatha Yoga there is no direct final beneficial result outside the body, which would be achieved by performing asanas. This is the first difference movements of yoga there is no addressee, no goal outside. The goal is the fixed form itself, which has a name. It is believed that 84 such forms are known in total. Compared with the number of intermediate “cuts” of the form that the body goes through in ordinary life, the number of asanas is vanishingly small. It takes quite a bit of time for them to remember. Much more - to turn them into a stereotype.
The purpose of the practice of asanas is also to achieve the ability to reproduce and display the bodily forms prescribed by the canon. The subject of the action of the body is the body itself - this is the second difference.
C. G. Jung talks about the archetypes of consciousness. This is nothing but the history of the development of the human brain, its formation, presented in the tendencies of manifestations of the psyche, in particular, certain images and emotional states associated with them.
The body also has a history of development of its "construction" and organization. Perhaps - given the history of the formation of the body - asanas are also archetypes of form and have a correspondence with animal forms of ontogenesis. Then the “scrolling” of such archetypes of form should facilitate the temporary shutdown of self-consciousness, because it was precisely during the period of the predominance of such forms that it did not yet exist.
Since the movements on entering and exiting asanas do not have an external orientation, then attention and consciousness in the practice of asanas must inevitably be limited to the limits of the body - this is the third difference. It has two consequences: perception is reversed - attention and consciousness move away from the external and are directed to the body, and this means that there is a primary limitation, a narrowing of consciousness. And him tension should be automatically lowered, since, by definition, as many different events cannot happen to the body in yoga as in the normal mode of functioning in the outside world, this is the fourth difference. Instead of a mass of simultaneously tracked objects, one remained - his own body. Instead of a field of events - one practice of bodily forms.
No matter how many and what movements the human body makes in ordinary life, the forms that it takes at the same time have nothing to do with what yoga offers.
Asanas - forms unknown to the body and consciousness of a person who has no experience of yoga - the fifth difference.
All yoga poses are characterized by the fact that when they are performed, we find ourselves outside the boundaries of all the usual ranges of motion, thereby reaching the possibly limiting forms for the body - the sixth feature.
We have no experience capable of coping with the quality of novelty that yoga contains as a phenomenon of a different culture. Everything that happens in the yoga of the body, from its form to the state of consciousness, has no analogues with the actions of the ordinary life of a European. The practice of asanas is something new, and our life experience is unsuitable for mastering it. But if we don't really know what the practice of asanas is, then obviously any of our actions here in the usual framework will be wrong? If a person who does not have special knowledge and experience in yoga considers it necessary to practice it for some reason, his any actions will inevitably have all the attributes of solving everyday problems. And this, as Talleyrand said, is more than a crime, it is a mistake. Which is the only, important and decisive for almost everyone who starts practicing Hatha Yoga on their own. The essence of wrongness is that a person tries to approach the new and unknown with all possible conscientiousness, with full diligence and diligence - but all this is in vain! No matter how old you are - your experience in yoga is not applicable, it does not matter. One has to learn everything from the very beginning, like a child who learns the process of walking.
By perseverance in achieving the goal, people can be conditionally divided into strong and weak types. A strong one is one who is capable of long-term efforts, perseverance, self-restraint. A person of such a warehouse will scrupulously do asanas “like in a book”, if he has already chosen this book as a basis. As a rule, not knowing the features, differences and laws of working with the body, in yoga a strong personality often drives himself into a dead end, applying the schemes of approach to solving problems already known to him in life. Then he does not let go of the incorrectly traveled path. As one brave officer once told me, after several years of hard practice, he disfigured his knee joints: “I tried as best I could, endured, but it only got worse.” Comments are superfluous.
The "weak" type of person expresses himself in yoga as follows: he will not exhaust himself with conscientious and hard work. When it becomes clear that there is no quick result, he will act by inertia for some time, automatically thinking about his own. This is an almost correct, non-violent method of dealing with the body, but the wrong state of mind.
In the first case - consciousness on the body, but not those methods. In the second, the method is almost normal, but the consciousness is not there. Therefore, both of these paths lead nowhere.
It is necessary to have a clear knowledge of the laws of bodily practice, and for this one should turn to the primary sources, which present in sufficient detail the technology for performing yoga postures, pranayamas and meditation.
There is one more, seventh feature of the practice of Hatha Yoga: here it is not the mind and desires that dictate the actions of the body, but it itself, as a result of the prescribed actions, forms the necessary states of consciousness and mind.
By regularly practicing asanas and pranayama, a person begins to gain new experience, that is, to adapt to yoga.
This is a multifaceted process, and its timing depends on a variety of things - on age, type of nervous and physical constitution, level of intelligence, character traits, lifestyle, etc. With a specific interest in yoga, a person adapts to it on average within a year or two regular practices.
Those whose health is not in order, who turned to yoga in order to improve it, need to consider both the presence of an addiction period and what can happen later. And it can happen - and, as a rule, it happens - a deterioration in well-being and condition. Because the practice of asanas, improving the general condition of the body, first breaks the usual “crooked” balance, which was the result of a chronic disorder. Therefore, before the rise comes, it can get worse, and you should be aware of this.
Acquiring new experience, we get it in the form of the consequences of the practice of Hatha Yoga. That is, while working with the body, we temporarily disappear from the usual field of human manifestations, turn off the stream of being. And every time we come back, we find ourselves a little different, because something happens to us in a new mode of existence.
Let's get back to changing states. Practicing asanas, we are removed for some time from reality. There is a kind of change from a single and familiar state to another. At this point, the possibility of a double error is really hidden. The first is when a person, entering into bodily yoga exercises, is unable to part with current thoughts, with the material of everyday life. In asanas, by definition, consciousness should be occupied only by the body, but all the same, various rubbish of daytime impressions is “dragged” from the outside. And this is not true, because then we "get stuck" in the usual state of consciousness, not "removing" attention inward into the volume of the body. And the practice loses a fair amount of meaning, since the typical, “external” state of consciousness, firstly, is associated with its usual level of tension, and secondly, it causes the same standard patterns and magnitudes of stress in the body. That is, we have nothing but a special work of the body with a state of consciousness that absolutely does not correspond to it. But the whole point is precisely in the need for complete awareness of this particular work of the body. Consciousness must be cut off from the material of everyday life. It is an illusion that one can think one thing and do another, at least in yoga.
"Genres" of consciousness and its activity should change completely during yoga classes. Maybe you should relax, do "Shavasana" or some kind of relaxing pranayama before practicing asanas. Or do two or three basic poses with a long time exposure to calm the mind, switch it to the body. Here, by the way, the experience of Boris Sakharov (Arov) is interesting. We tried many different options at one time and came to this: an excellent “switch” of consciousness can be “Pashchimottanasana” or a headstand. When doing, say, three approaches of five minutes to "Pashchimottanasana" (B.K.S. Iyengar "Clarification of Yoga", p. 160), during this time, you can completely relax the body and mind. In this case, the three-fold forward bend is, as it were, a universal entry into practice. When the desired state is “caught” and fixed, then the practice goes on without a hitch. Sakharov uses "Pashchimottanasana", Iyengar starts (intermediate and advanced course) with a cycle of asanas in a headstand. You can start with Virasana, and with Baddha Konasana, and with Padmasana - just to switch off from ordinary reality. These poses should be fixed longer and repeated 3 to 5 times to get through the "door in the wall" and stay there for the right time. Gradually, you will learn to disconnect from the outside, to capture the desired state and perform asanas in it.
And then the following problem may arise: now the consciousness changed by the practice of yoga will “drag” after you into everyday life! I have to admit, it's a damn nasty thing. The following happens: during the practice of asanas with a “quenched” consciousness, perception becomes more refined, especially with time. Tactile sensitivity grows, hearing becomes sharper, attention begins to distinguish subtle movements in the body, etc. Now you have completed the practice and “surfaced” into everyday life, with sensitivity “from there”. You may get the feeling that the ordinary world around has turned into something like a rolling mill. And again this is not true. Again, the "genre" was not changed in time. Before going out into everyday life, this sensitivity must be drowned out, otherwise it is not far from a neurosis. Before shavasana, you should tell yourself that the practice is over, I am becoming ordinary. Such an intention can also be formed before starting the practice: “When I get out of shavasana, my perception will be normal.”
Increased sensitivity is a clear consequence of prolonged yoga practice. The Yoga Sutra even says that "the yogi becomes sensitive like an eyeball." It's ok when it's in control. If such sensitivity exists beyond your control, this is a wrong development, and measures should be taken. The problem of exacerbation of sensitivity is directly related to the next topic that needs to be touched upon: if yoga makes a person more calm and balanced - people of creative professions are perplexed - does this not lead to a certain dullness? After all, creativity, as is commonly thought, carries an element of ecstasy, and why should I become calm, like an Indian tomb? The point, of course, is not in yoga, but in who, how and for what uses yoga. This ancient art is the most perfect tool, high technology, but people are different. An ancient Chinese proverb says: "There is no bad field, there are bad people." With the help of yoga, you can recover, but you can also get sick. You can come to take-offs of the spirit, or you can turn into a blissful one, endlessly driving yourself into meaningless positive experiences. Why blame the instrument, it is impersonal. You should be afraid of your ignorance. Hans Selye rightly noted that life in general is impossible without stress, but the whole point is in its sign and portability. It is no secret that in the field of creative activity, each period of history shows several brilliant personalities. Then follows a vanishingly thin layer of talents and high professionals. Then comes the mass of artisans. Geniuses do not need doping for creativity. Talents, unfortunately, are subject to them. But if creative activity requires constant artificial whipping, then this is not creativity.
Every human being who has just been born, due to a change in habitat, falls into a zone of discomfort. Therefore, when a newborn is well, he just falls asleep. Later, in a little man, periods of comfort of being arise and begin to lengthen - adaptation mechanisms work. A person at any age is characterized by a constant change in emotional polarity. Right now he is sad or cheerful, calm or anxious, but if a person is more or less healthy, he is almost never in a “no way” state. Although when changing emotions there is always a certain “dead point” of zero emotional values, it is usually just as impossible to feel and stay in it as in the interval between wakefulness and sleep. However - in a state of happiness, too, there is no way to remain by an effort of will. Known, but still surprising, is the fact that negative states are more persistent, and their physiological provision is much more fully represented in the brain.
The experience of any emotion is incompatible with an effective thought process, especially negative emotions. Emotion - spasm of consciousness, "spoiled thought", loss of control. Emotions take away too much energy from consciousness, thereby narrowing it, and in the limit of emotions, consciousness almost disappears.
The problems of creative states with their experiences, on the one hand, and emotional stability, on the other, inevitably come into conflict.
As a person matures, he gradually acquires a relative emotional balance, the quality of which can be represented by the concept of temperament - choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic. These are conditional "pure" types, usually a specific person is a mixture of them with the advantage of one of the varieties of response at a given time. According to the type of reaction that usually prevails, the subject is characterized as “sanguine”, etc. A healthy person most of the time is in a state of emotional comfort, holding a “controlling stake” of shares of the positive. But it also happens that you want even more good things. If only because a creative experience, as many have heard, is primarily an experience of happiness. It follows that if positive emotions are provided, it can stimulate the process of creativity. People do not understand that by their insane interference in the natural course of things they destroy the existing balance, which can lead to unpredictable consequences. Emotions take too much energy, including positive ones. At the peak of a positive experience, one cannot stay for a long time. The higher the intensity of emotions, the less time that can be in this "temperature" to stay. Inevitably, there comes a recession, an antiphase. That is why, in the midst of complete joy and delight for no apparent reason, happiness suddenly begins to wane.
But a person stubbornly desires one happiness, pure happiness, endless positive emotions. There are many ways to be happy at least for a while, as well as people who seek it. Thrill seeking is a form of emotional addiction. Once a very young guy told me: “How many years I have been living this damned routine, like a snail. How good it was when we stormed the ninth quarter of Herat! Days, the second - massacre, shooting, insane heat. Everything is at the limit ... And then, when everything ends, and you are still alive ... This feeling ... Only for the sake of it, I would go to Afghanistan again! From a professional climber, I heard about the same thing. To my words that there, at the top, is probably unimaginable beauty, he said: “What the hell is beauty?! That's when I got to the top, went down and remained alive - then yes! It's like getting out of a fight..."
In the works of Professor Bernstein and his followers, the concept of the "emotional horizon" was formulated. Its essence is that each person is hereditarily characterized by both a certain emotional balance and its stability. As well as the height of "ups" and "failures", that is, the range of emotional amplitude. The practice of yoga “cuts off” the depth of emotional “failures” and, as a result, the experiences of emotional ups and downs become more “transparent”, the taste of hysteria, rage, frenzy, loss of oneself disappears from them. Is it good or bad for creativity? I will answer with the words of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who said the following: “Inspiration is the disposition of the soul to the living acceptance of impressions, therefore, to a quick understanding of concepts, which contributes to their explanation. Inspiration is needed in poetry, as in geometry. The critic mixes delight with inspiration. No, absolutely not. Rapture excludes tranquility, a necessary condition for beauty. Rapture does not presuppose the power of the mind, which disposes the parts in their relation to the whole. Or to a friend: "When a feeling dictates a line, it sends a slave to the stage."
You better not say. It is yoga that adds a component of calmness and balance to a person's life. Since the sensitivity of perception grows, the magnitude and saturation of the experienced positive emotions rather increases, but the component of senseless delight, a purely animal reaction, is eliminated. Creative ecstasy remains transparent to thought. The state of creating or understanding something new and the state of losing the human are completely different. Proper yoga practice brings us to a level of stable averages of emotional balance, which promotes creativity and reduces the inevitable emotional costs.
A digression is necessary here, because the mechanism of the emergence of emotions, as well as their role in human life, has not yet received a sufficiently convincing scientific interpretation. This work, all the more, cannot claim it, however, the author considers it possible to express his thoughts on this topic within the framework of a personal hypothesis.
Both humans and animals of the mammalian class are characterized by manifestations of emotions. Today it is also known that “the emotional state of a person seems to be highly dependent on the activity of the cortical regions that form the so-called limbic system. This part of the brain lies below the neocortex (cerebral cortex - V.B.) and surrounds the brain stem, in phylogenetic terms this is a primitive formation ”(Bernstein "Beauty and the Brain", p. 188).
The only kind or mode of perception in animals is unconscious perception. Animal reactions are based on instinct and experience. The speed of perception and response ensures the survival of each individual and the species as a whole. A similar reflection of reality was once characteristic of the ancestors of man.
All human actions are energy-consuming, and energy is spent in two main directions - on the body and psyche.
The inner world of the body, the work of organs and systems responsible for life support and maintaining the constancy of the internal environment, are controlled by the brain in an automatic mode, without the participation of consciousness. All the necessary actions are provided either by the peripheral nervous system or the lower levels of the central nervous system.
The brain is the part of the CNS that is located in the cranium. The second part of the CNS is the spinal cord. Nerves entering and exiting the CNS are - if located outside the skull and spine - part of the peripheral nervous system.
Some areas of the peripheral nervous system are weakly connected to the CNS and, apparently, function autonomously. They are called the autonomic or autonomic nervous system. It is she, as already noted, that is responsible for the regulation of the parameters of the internal environment of the body. The autonomic nervous system consists of two main divisions - sympathetic and parasympathetic. The neurons that control the muscles of the internal organs lie outside the CNS.
Activation of the sympathetic division of the vegetative system leads to dilated pupils, increased heart rate, and increased blood flow. Digestion processes slow down. All these changes are carried out with the help of norepinephrine. There is an additional, faster-acting system that produces the same changes, but more totally - it is the adrenal medulla, which releases adrenaline and norepinephrine directly into the blood.
The predominance of the activity of the parasympathetic division of the vegetative system leads to a transition to the mode of rest, relaxation, recovery. The functions of these two parts of vegetarianism are complementary. There is also a third part of it - this is the diffuse nervous system of the intestine, but it is not considered within the scope of our work.
So, the central nervous system controls the perception systems and skeletal muscles, vegetative - maintains the constancy of the internal environment. There is a "parallel" CNS in its work, the endocrine system.
If nervous control is carried out through neurotransmitters, then endocrine control is through hormones secreted into the blood by the glands of the body. The main gland should be considered the brain, and the processes by which it links the current needs of the body with environmental influences can be called one of the most important neuroendocrine functions.
Thus, the vegetative system together with the endocrine system, united in their activity by the brain, “keep” the parameters of the internal environment, despite all fluctuations in the conditions of the external environment - if a person is healthy.
What are emotions? Apparently, this is something more than just a vegetative reaction and the sensations associated with it. The Cannon-Bard theory states that when perceiving events that cause emotions, nerve impulses first pass through the hypothalamus, which "turns on" the corresponding activity of the vegetative system. Then the excitement splits. One half of it enters the cerebral cortex, where it causes the subjective experience of emotions, while the other, just through the hypothalamus, activates the vegetative system.
That is, nerve impulses during the work of the perception systems - the sense organs - heading to the cortex, first pass through the limbic structures, which determine the nature of emotions from a given amount of influences. The brain, as it were, “receives” the perception, and when the consciousness “understands” what exactly is perceived, the emotional coloring of the perceived is already built into the sensations and reactions of the consciousness. And the reactions of consciousness, feedback, signals from the brain also pass through the limbic system and are emotionally “warmed up”.
Emotions are older than consciousness. Thinking is almost always colored by emotions. But nervous reactions directly - in case of danger - go from the sense organs to the cortex and back to the muscles, and only then the hypothalamus turns on the mechanisms of excitation of the autonomic system, then there is a physiological reaction to the already reflected situation.
But the consciousness does not have time to react when something happens unexpectedly and at lightning speed, say, a car runs over you. The phenomenon of perceptual defense consists in the fact that the unconscious blocks perception itself, "turning off" for some time the organs of hearing or vision. A person does not hear and does not see what, being perceived, can have a destructive effect on consciousness, on personality. The unconscious simply does not allow consciousness to perceive what is.
In the case of manifestations of intuition or supersensory abilities, a person begins to perceive what is not yet or is already in the sphere of action of the senses. What blocks the flow of available, available information into consciousness in the first case, and what, from where and how delivers it to the senses (perception) in the second?
Emotions, as a component of human reactions and actions, are included in the means and methods of social communication, being manifested in consciousness and to some extent controlled by it. But at the same time they are a manifestation of the unconscious part of the psyche, moreover - impersonal.
The phenomenon of subliminal perception brings us back to the same problem of emotions. When information is given for such a time that the consciousness does not catch it, but upon presentation of it to a person during normal perception, among the rest, he prefers exactly what the consciousness did not perceive.
Here he evaluates and perceives the unconscious, since the choice of consciousness is emotive, its criterion is “like”. Among other things, I like this, although there are no prerequisites for choosing.
Consequently, the "prehuman" mechanism of perception exists and is directly connected with consciousness, influencing it directly or indirectly.
Actually, we, taking some actions, coming to certain conclusions, never know what share of information is perceived with the participation of consciousness, what - without, and whose contribution is decisive.
It has long been known that the brain "writes" everything that falls within the limits of volumes perceived and controlled by the senses. Moreover, most of the flow of information is not fixed by consciousness. Moreover, attention, and consequently, consciousness, first of all “snatch” from the flow of sensory influences what it somehow selectively relates to, positively or negatively, with which it interacts emotionally. “Neutral” in the emotional sense, information passes by consciousness, “falling through” into the personal, but inhuman, unconscious area of the unconscious.
So, in any acts of perception, a person encounters his own unconscious (I repeat - impersonal, archetypal) visibly and roughly - in the form of his own emotions. If he is not able to organize his actions so that negative emotions are “swept out”, “worked out” - they can be forced out in the form of traumatic factors into the “active” layer of the personal unconscious, into personal “hell” (see the chapter “The structure of the psyche ").
In addition to the displacement, which to some extent “unloads” consciousness, as a result of the lack of actions necessary to reflect a negative situation, the hormonal “charge” that the endocrine system gives out precisely to ensure physical activity for expressing emotions and direct involvement in the scenario is not spent for its intended purpose. her permission.
An endocrine-emotional “stagnation” appears, “warming up” the psyche as a whole, an imbalance occurs.
It is possible to analyze the effects of "holotropic" breathing on a person from this point of view. What happens when forced hyperventilation begins? Firstly, the body receives an excess of oxygen, because there is no consumption of it, which is characteristic of physical movements that cause such intense breathing. The acid-base reaction of the blood moves towards alkalosis, a kind of oxygen anesthesia occurs, well known to scuba divers who breathe pure oxygen - this is a euphoric state with delusional manifestations.
Respiration is regulated in two ways: by deviation (change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or oxygen) and by perturbation (respiration rate increases in the presence of muscular work to prevent a lack of oxygen). In reverse, an arbitrary increase in breathing leads to a general excitation, the muscles of the body tense up. The sympathetic part of the autonomic system is activated. But there is no muscular work, except for breathing, muscle tension includes endocrine “preparation” for action.
As a rule, in a session of holotropic breathing, a person enters a euphoric state, being already in a certain emotional “coloring”. Euphoria enhances the experience of that emotional "sign" that existed at the time the subject began the process of hyperventilation. Usually, "free breathing" sessions are used for therapeutic purposes for people in borderline and neurotic states - that is, those who are obviously "overloaded" with negative emotions. When euphoria sets in, consciousness is oppressed, freeing the “channel” to dump the “combustible material” accumulated in the repressed layer of the unconscious. Emotions and the tensions corresponding to them begin to drop like an avalanche, disorderly, manifesting themselves in bodily sensations, reactions, and behavior. Through an open “channel” instincts can “hook up” to emotions (which usually happens). Human consciousness finds itself on the path of a stream of tensions and emotions, bursting uncontrollably from the personal unconscious, which draws out from the animal depths of the psyche the instinctive forms of manifestation of these emotions and the actions that accompany them. Simply put, a person for some time loses all censorship and control of consciousness, loses control. Which is far from safe, especially with deviations of the physical and mental initial states, if the person is not healthy.
Under certain conditions, a kind of respiratory dependence can occur, akin to drug addiction. At a seminar in the Crimea - 1992 - in the former settlement of the Shchelkino nuclear power plant, one of those who was an assistant at the “free breathing” sessions told me: “Now you don’t even need to drink vodka, I just breathe for three hours a day!”
So, emotions are the diocese of the unconscious. The emotional component of the unconscious is represented in everyday states of waking consciousness. Consciousness is a damper that inhibits the manifestations of emotions that have an instinctive nature. We can say that the emotional coloring of the received or reproduced information always has a personal manifestation, but an impersonal character. A strong and developed consciousness is capable, as Rene Descartes wrote in his famous treatise "On the Passions", to put emotions "at the service". Being conscious and controlled, emotions are able to lead us to the heights of spiritual ups and downs, higher human aspirations and experiences. The cultural "filter" of consciousness transforms animal impulses into human impulses. But with insufficient strength of consciousness, defects in its development, immaturity, "holotropic" breathing can devalue the cultural baggage of the individual, emotionally shake it, which leads to the predominance of the instinctive.
The structures responsible for negative emotions are represented in the brain with more “power” than positive ones, perhaps because a person has evolved in an environment of a huge hostile world. The true formation of personality occurs and is successfully completed only when faced with it one on one.
Today, in industrialized countries, where a high degree of comfort of existence has been achieved, positive emotions are becoming scarce. First, what to achieve when in the family of the average American, according to our ideas, there is nothing to desire or achieve at all. Secondly, when everyone has everything, then no one needs anyone. The highest degree of alienation of people from each other is observed. The level of technology eliminates the physical costs required to develop negative emotions that are generated by the loss of the necessary degree of communication with their own kind, and not with a computer. Instead of a satisfying combination of mental and physical, bodily activities, there was a bare “pushing buttons”. A person does not spend himself physically, does not give all the best even in satisfying needs and desires. He manages to organize the achievement of goals and positive emotional experiences without his personal, physical expenditure in a "pure" form. Without payment by spending oneself, any emotional experiences degenerate, acquire a destructive effect. Getting pleasure without personal energy costs, a person finds paradise, which inevitably ends in disaster. Alcohol, drugs, audio and video surrogates of real life and real action, the race for spectacle - all this seems to provide the desired experience.
But they are only an imitation of the true, a picture of other people's efforts. After the consumption of imitations, there is emptiness, a feeling of deceit, nonsense. Providing an objectless "paradise", alcohol and drugs then with even greater force throw the consumer into a psychosomatic "hell", from which only a new dose can be saved - thus the standard sequence of actions leading to degradation and death is unwound. The flip side of the frantic pursuit of pleasure, positive emotions is existential emptiness. Bullfighting, racing, ketch, horror films - everything is aimed at burning emotions, shaking up. Any positive experience of "synthetic", non-natural origin causes an emotional "go-ahead", leads to a sharp pointless change of positive states to equally powerful negative ones - and for no apparent reason.
The practice of yoga allows you to “unhook” emotions from everyday, domestic situations. This is achieved through a relaxation “break” of feedback (efferent) connections in asanas. Freeing ourselves from the "littering" of ordinary actions with emotions, we avoid unconsciousness in our behavior and the work of the mind that provides it. As soon as such a “disengagement” occurs, this is evidence of the achievement of the primary balance of the psyche, a sign of the elimination of deep tensions in the personal unconscious. The body through the practice of asanas turns into a channel for "bleeding" unconscious tensions.
When the personality layer of the psyche is overstressed, in a certain type of people this manifests itself in the form of spontaneous visual and auditory hallucinations, which are usually mistaken for manifestations of the "higher", although in reality these are nothing more than painful, clinical "outbursts" of internal problems. In such states, it is extremely undesirable to “meditate” on your own, because the practice of a “wild cat” always only aggravates the condition and emotional instability.
In addition to those aspects that we have touched upon, the concept of equilibrium has far-reaching consequences. By the way, the Bhagavad Gita gives a clear definition: "Yoga is called balance." And in this sense, I would like to touch upon such a property of a person as the desire for perfection in general and the perfection of the body - in particular. There are a fairly large number of yoga fans who set perfection in asanas or in general in life as their goal. In my opinion, this approach is wrong and even dangerous. There is a very big difference between completeness and perfection! There are people who have taken Iyengar as a model in body yoga, and their goal is to do the same asanas that he does. But why?! Once a question was asked to one of Iyengar's secretaries, Dr. Faek Beersa: "Is it possible to practice yoga according to the book "Clarifying Yoga"?" The answer was short: "No!" Then the next question is: "Why?" Answer: “Because this book is the horizon. It can be used by people like Guruji himself. If an ordinary person tries to go this way, it will kill him in a fairly short time.
I think comments are unnecessary. Perfection - striving for what you consider perfect, for the image that you WANT to be. Completeness is something that is inherent in you by nature, and not from the ideas of the mind. This is your inherent completeness, the optimal, best, most vital balance for you. And almost always the path to perfection turns out to lead away from completeness, from exactly what you need. And this applies not only to body yoga. How many fanatics tore ligaments, tendons, muscles, twisted joints, trying at any cost to do as "in the picture"! There is only one Iyengar, it cannot be repeated. And you don't need to. Everyone who practices yoga has their own level of Iyengarism. And it is pointless and stupid to compare levels, because the complexity of the asanas performed by you and exactly correctly is the measure of the path in yoga of the body. There are people with hypermobility of the joints, there are few of them, but for them what Iyengar does with the body is not a problem, such flexibility is inherent in them, and sometimes it is their defect that interferes with life. To become healthy and balanced in body and mind, you have to get rid of this flexibility. What, to consider such people yogis from birth?
The forms of the body, their dynamics, the development of flexibility are derived from the right path, from the truth of the achieved states of consciousness. Flexibility is a by-product of practice, as are siddhis (vibhuti). If you specifically develop flexibility through yoga asanas, then sooner or later problems arise. The limits of what you can do yourself are much less than what can happen naturally, through "action by inaction."
In addition, today in yoga there are - and there were, apparently, earlier - directions that set as their goal precisely the development of ultimate flexibility. And not on the basis of traditional technology, but with the help of various additional means. In my own practice for many years, I have met similar people obsessed with flexibility. When we started in yoga, those who were especially impatient resorted, for example, to fasting, because “hunger” supposedly improves flexibility. It is clear that after leaving the fast, after some time, its level is restored within the previous boundaries. Of course, if as a result of starvation a person lost 10 kg of weight, then he will definitely bend better, because now fat does not interfere, but we do not take this case as a typical one. Starve "for flexibility" more precisely those whose weight is normal, but they want to bend quickly. Other extremists do asanas through pain, they think: “What kind of practice is this if I don’t feel the work ?!” Such figures, openly violating ahimsa in relation to their body, come to endless injuries, and this is where all yoga ends for them.
There are people who are more sophisticated. Based on rare personal data, abilities, features of the body and psyche, they invent their own ways of developing hypermobility. A few years ago, a man was shown on TV who easily took out his joints. My acquaintance from Murom, Igor, a man of phenomenal bodily instinct and ability, has developed tremendous flexibility based on pure empiricism. But, not knowing the basic principles, he ran into a number of problems: the combination of muscle strength and joint flexibility; discrepancy between the rate of adaptation (and even capabilities) of the internal organs and the rest of the body to the rate of development of flexibility and the holding time of extreme positions; relaxation of the body and consciousness, when the mere presence of active control of the "I" in itself makes staying at the motor limit dangerous and unstable; accumulation of internal emotional stress due to lack of relaxation, etc.
There is another way to acquire "higher" flexibility - an increase in body temperature. It can be external and internal. The first is when a person warms up physically before practicing asanas through ordinary dynamic movements - say, running. This practice was used many years ago in Moscow by Ya.I. Koltunov and then was embodied in the Hatha yoga classes of the Cosmos association, now almost legendary.
There seems to be no special sedition in this - at first glance. Well, what's wrong with that - an hour of unhurried running, a good sweat, and after that the body bends beautifully. But let's take a closer look. Let running and then Hatha yoga go in the morning. After sleep, a person is relaxed, parasympathetic tone prevails, energy is trophotropic. The process of running “pulls up” the system, restructuring to an energy-tropic state with a predominance of sympathy begins, which then again should be “extinguished” and rebuilt in yoga practice. Absurd? Undoubtedly. Yes, the body bends better. But what are asanas for? What is their meaning? “Asana is a means for developing and maintaining a state of calm and concentration” - something like this is said in the Yoga Sutra. Let it be easier for a warm body to bend, but then we bend, take the ultimate form in asanas and remain motionless not just to bend, but to change the state of consciousness. The usual dynamics and consciousness remains normal, since the psychophysical effect of an hour's run lasts at least three to four hours. Hatha yoga is not designed to develop ultimate flexibility.
Any kind of technology for working with consciousness implies complete immobility of the body - with the exception of Buddhist vipassana. Which, however, is based on the "binding" of consciousness to a rhythmic, monotonous, monotonous movement, but in no case to the practice of asanas.
Just as there were heresies in Christianity or Buddhism, so yoga, especially in the Middle Ages, broke up into many sects and currents, each of which, developing some one aspect, declared itself to have “basic knowledge”, which certainly originated from the root tradition or even something earlier.
This process continues today. About ten years ago, yoga enthusiasts in the city of Kyiv, who had practiced qigong and taijiquan quite seriously before, accidentally connected the practice of acant with breath holding. The effect after some experimentation turned out to be interesting. A chain lined up: the practice of asanas with breath holdings - and in Tantra yoga all this was already and was called bandhas and mudras; after delays on exhalation and efforts corresponding to the general tension of the body in forced flexion, it became simply bad. But on inhalation... Asanas with bandhas and breath holdings on inhalation, with a short but significant general tension of the body lead to a strong and rapid bodily warming up. The vegetative system "pulls itself up" to the limit, sweat comes out. And the body begins to bend like rubber. The increase in flexibility - given the youth of the experimenters - was amazing. Pretty soon, the guys could already repeat many of the postures of the highest category of difficulty offered in Iyengar's book "Clarification of Yoga". Very quickly, the new technology was linked to the principles of "flow" in "qigong". The unpleasant, oppressive tension of the nervous system that accumulated during this practice was excellently relieved by the final hyperventilation. Moreover, sensations and experiences at the same time arose such that at first the experimenters mistook them for the “awakening of the Kundalini”. Only later, having rummaged through the literature, they realized that a sharp release of energy responds with general euphoria and sensations that pass through the meridians and “channels” of the body, known in zhenjiu therapy. In Tantra yoga they are called sphuta.
The intermediate ecstasy, against which the Buddha warned against infatuation, was taken as the final result. As a result, the practice of “Yoga-dhara-sadhana” was born, in which the main emphasis is on the shock development of flexibility, where flexibility is not a consequence of proper work with the body and mind, but something that you can come to with your own will, efforts and quickly enough .
Later, one of the founders of this trend found an analogy to his method somewhere in India (as if in India someone is immune from mistakes!) and even in later yogic texts. From the point of view of traditional yoga, this direction is nothing more than a curiosity. Able, however, to bring certain harm, as causing aberration of vision, understanding of the essence and meaning of the orientation of traditional yoga.
In addition, the constant forceful personal reaching the limits of flexibility, which is the essence of this practice, is very reminiscent of the sport of records, where people also go to the limits of the possible through training and personal efforts, while exchanging these achievements for their health. The goal of Hatha Yoga is to preserve and strengthen the health of the body, and the acquisition of a level of flexibility peculiar only to this person is a side and spontaneous phenomenon. Iyengar is a champion in asanas. Few of the sane people want to suddenly run a hundred meters in 9.86 seconds or jump 2.36 meters high, so take it and start at 20, 30, 50 years old and easily repeat the world record, something that only a few out of thousands capable of strive for years, giving it all their time and health from their youth and by the age of 30, as a rule, leaving the race. In the case of body yoga, a person, as if spellbound, looks at the illustrations in the Iyengar book or the posters of the Yoga Dhara Sadhana and unconditionally believes that he can repeat what is shown there. Everyone has their own maximum limit of flexibility, which corresponds to the state of physical health achieved by competently creating optimal conditions for its natural development. Anything greater than, above, or stronger than this natural level turns into its opposite in effect. You can learn to force yourself to do the most difficult asanas in the end, but this will go to the detriment of health and well-being. When the optimum is reached, trying to be "better than good" can only make things worse. Everyone has their own blood pressure. Those who have a 110/70 vital standard will gain nothing by raising it to 120/80. As in running for the result: if a person “out of the blue” at will, at middle age, with an average level of health, starts training, no matter how you turn inside out, sooner or later he will stumble upon a personal limit in the growth of results. And no matter what he does, he can't rise above. The same is the case with the development of flexibility in yoga. You can exceed the limit of your own results, but this requires doping. The results will be unnatural, there will be and will begin to grow the price of "height". The desire for ultimate flexibility - the desire for the absolute, unwillingness to reckon with objective factors will lead to the fact that, having surpassed himself and achieved the performance of asanas “as in the picture”, a person will increase the already existing imbalance and lose health in exchange for the realization of a dream.
Yes, holding the breath in asanas using the methods of "Dhara-sadhana" allows young people to bring flexibility to amazing limits, and - quickly. But what is the physiological price of such doping as volitional regulation of breathing, raising body temperature, sharp excitation and inhibition of the nervous system? In 1996, in Sevastopol, on an advertisement for the Alushta seminar "Yoga-dhara-sadhana", one could see the postscript: "Please do not worry about the sick and the weak." In my naivety, it always seemed to me that yoga is just what can give the sick and weak one last chance. Because it is the process of natural increase in flexibility and its effect that is one of the powerful healing factors of the therapeutic effect of Hatha yoga asanas.
Work in the "stream of asanas" is also controversial, for one simple reason: each body and psyche are individual, require their own limitations, their own sequence, their own accents. Therefore, yoga is work with the body in a certain state of consciousness, which is a homogeneous stream.
There is a classic way of working with the body and mind in yoga. The ways of passing this path, the meaning and purpose are indicated. By driving the body to the brink of being, according to one's own understanding, one cannot count on the benefit of the spirit. As the Fathers of the Church said: “Whoever forces a weak body beyond its strength, causes double embarrassment to the soul.”
The next topic to be touched upon is the effect of yoga practice on the mind. It is known that the states of the body and consciousness are interconnected. Doing Hatha yoga, creating an increase in flexibility - a new amount of body mobility - additional to the already existing one, we are drawn into movement. Each specific unit of bodily volume is represented by innervation in the central and peripheral nervous systems. The nature of direct and reverse (afferent and efferent) signals coming from the center to the periphery and back is standard. When the increase in the volume of flexibility begins, from those parts of the matter of the body that are first involved in movement, the nature of the signals changes. That cannot but affect the corresponding structures of the brain, which inevitably reflect, take into account, feel both external and internal changes. The increase in flexibility, being a change in certain, previously static volumes of the body, is not a disease, but a direct effect on the brain, which cannot but affect the properties of the individual. Thus, by changing the qualities of the body, we change ourselves as a whole. Or, to be more precise, we create conditions for optimization, the achievement of psychophysical perfection.
In general, a change in the quality of psychosomatics is possible in a variety of ways and always depends on individual characteristics. Conventionally, they can be divided into two main groups: those manifested in sensations and consciousness and those not manifested.
Unmanifested - this is the case when a person who regularly practices yoga does not track current changes in himself in any way, except for observing the fact that yesterday the asanas "went" easier, today - worse, or vice versa. With people of this type, nothing special happens, even with the most careful and most regular practice. It’s just that at some point in time, a person realizes with amazement: but I couldn’t do this before! I didn’t bend like this, I couldn’t forget that I was in this position. Now it's like it's always been that way. Changes in this case are fixed after the fact, when they have already occurred, and at some point in time, on some banal little thing, the consciousness suddenly bumps into something new in the body. The accompanying changes in perception itself are not observable. For individuals with such a mode of self-consciousness, the psychological consequences of practice are realized only after a long time, as a result of the changed reactions of the outside world (in particular, society) to their actions. This awareness, which comes as if from the opposite: I have remained the same, but everything in my life has changed so much - it is so different that I am already different, and only seem to myself the same. Often, long before the subject himself, changes in himself and his behavior are noticed by relatives and friends.
In general, the process of transformation through regular yoga practice - whether it be asanas or something else, or a complex of influences - is very curious in his subsequent awareness, when he has already gone through it himself and observed it on others.
Who determines a person's path through life, what determines its "configuration", with consequences and results? Nietzsche formulated his famous paradox: "Truth is error." One of the interpretations of the meaning of this formulation can be as follows: we live as we live. Since the unconscious plays an enormous and not fully elucidated role in our perception and our reactions, the true causes of our actions and deeds are never exhaustively known to us ourselves. In fact, it is impossible to even talk about truth, the criterion is the results of our own actions, which more or less suit us. But even the positive result of our decisions, our will and logic, what we wanted and what we are proud of, has in its composition “two kopecks”, which are conditioned by the unconscious, perhaps they are decisive. In fact, a person never knows why he acts this way and not that way. Consciousness, as it were, chooses goals and paths to them - its path is always in focus. But the unconscious is the periphery of perception, which is many times more than the focus, and who has the decisive role in strategy and tactics - reason or unconscious intuition? Therefore, the life path configuration is always random. But being at some point and looking back, a person sees his own path, it is like this, this road left behind. But when I begin to explain why it is like this, to look for logical justifications for the path, I fall into error. Because only the mind cannot explain the line that I drew in the space of this world as a result of the sum of fully conscious, unconscious, half of my states, actions and deeds. Determinism is inapplicable here, as well as relativism. It can be argued that the path is predetermined. Or to think that human life and destiny is just an accident, a play of shadows. The model of thinking that has come down to us from antiquity is polar: there is black and there is white, yes and no, night and day, truth and lies. The ancient Indian model is as follows: there is neither black nor white, there is an illusion created by a higher reality. The ancient Chinese modification of the approach, apparently, is more vital: black will be white, and vice versa, through transitions and changes in proportions and combinations, an endless gamut of semitones of states, sensations, thoughts.
In our case, as a result of regular yoga practice, namely regular, systematic and inexorable effort, the life line changes its configuration. How does it change? Which way, for better or for worse? Nobody will say this. I will only note that according to my observations, those who managed to “take yoga”, adapt to it or adapt it to themselves, life “comes to life”, balances, becomes free from undesirable phenomena, tendencies. Disorder disappears, and most importantly, what a person calls the meaning of existence and so wants to find comes through. There comes something that money cannot buy, cannot be found on the way to it. The meaning of each and for each - its own. And all variants of its occurrence are disinterested.
The result of integrating yoga into human life is very interesting. Our guys, preparing them for Afghanistan, were “fastened” with a sandbag from getting up to lights out. And when, already in the mountains, a soldier “shot” upwards so that no dushman could keep up with him, this saved a person’s life through freedom of maneuver - then the role of burdening became clear. Three or four months with weights changed the line of a person's life; - yoga is the same. If you are in it, the line of life will go differently. You will find yourself in such places, such spaces of matter and consciousness, where you would never have been able to get without it. In addition, these areas of existence will have different properties than before. M. Mamardashvili said that "you are thrown into some other places, where you get on the magnetic lines of laws." That is, accidents cannot leave our lives, but they develop as we need. But if we decide to benefit, the effect of yoga is only for ourselves - it will first become minimal, then negative, isolating a person from society.
Let us return to the case when a person sees his own changes, his progress in the practice of yoga. In part, this progress acts like a sculptor's chisel, cutting off the superfluous from the body, consciousness, and soul. Then, in place of this superfluous, or rather missing, the necessary begins to “grow”, which is inherent in you by nature, but erased, crushed, twisted.
In what and how can the changes visible to the person himself in the regular practice of yoga manifest themselves? There are four main types: predominantly bodily effects, predominantly neuropsychic, combined, and, finally, something manifested outside the body and consciousness.
First of all, it should be noted that, depending on the individual sensitivity of perception, the general condition almost always worsens. Just as the first sign of the awakening of the Kundalini is an unreasonable depression, so the change in quality, the re-adjustment of the system begins from the zero level, from reaching the breaking point, the bifurcation. Moreover, a subjectively dissatisfied state occurs out of the blue, for no apparent reason. And what's more - often the beginning of the loss of stability is precisely the feeling of complete joyful internal and external well-being. And the subsequent causeless and even more pronounced "go-ahead" of the state is extremely surprising, perplexing and frightening. If the physical component of the zero state is weakly expressed, that is, the level of health of the body is such that it does not have a special reaction to restructuring, a change in the level of quality (which implies, first of all, some kind of reorganization of the energy), then we feel it exclusively in the neuropsychic sphere. The weaker the organism, the stronger the zero state is felt by the corporal matter, and the weaker - the neuro-psychic. In the sick, a sharp deterioration is followed by a recovery and a rapid rise, so it is easier to work with those who have bodily problems. When the effect is seen with one's own eyes, it is no longer necessary to persuade a person to do yoga. By the way, if you correctly build a practice, even with a clear and symptomatic health disorder, changes for the worse can be avoided.
But it happens that such fractures still exist in essentially healthy people, and in psychosomatics as a whole or separately. Example one: a 45-year-old woman with 6 years of experience in Hatha yoga. Periodically experiences the following: for some reason, always different, the body temperature rises to 40 degrees, sleep disappears. This state lasts for about 3-4 days, the person feels great, although unusual. There is no sleep at night, the head is clear, and mental work can be done effectively. Then the temperature drops, everything returns to normal. Except that the overall flexibility of the body increases by 20 percent.
The second case: a 50-year-old woman, a change in quality is noted in telelocal unreasonable pains, the appearance of powerful "clamps" that just as suddenly disappear - and depressive states at the same time. It is interesting that when a person is not aware of the essence of what is happening to him, and negative psycho-emotional states on the basis of "self-promotion" are delayed, this also prolongs bodily troubles.
The third case: a marathon runner, 40 years old. Ideal yoga practice for 3 years. The bodily progress is undoubted - all the injuries accumulated over 18 years of sports competitions are gone, flexibility has increased. The change in quality was observed outside the body in two ways: in psychological states and external events connected with them. Although at first this connection was not realized, being the cause of negative psycho-emotional experiences.
There are cases when a restructuring is felt, manifests itself in the body and in the psyche, but is felt more strongly in the latter. In the chapter "Siddhis" I mention people who began to perceive completely unexpected aspects of reality, which is also a consequence of the restructuring of psychosomatics under the influence of yoga practice, and only bodily!
So, if the states of bifurcation in the neuropsychic area are experienced differently and, as a side effect, can lead to “small siddhis”, then the general bodily well-being, as a rule, worsens. At the same time, with “failures” of bodily well-being, concomitant manifestations in the neuropsychic environment can be both pronounced and erased, implicit.
All this must be known, kept in mind during introspection, so that, correctly orienting oneself in what is happening, one should not disturb the natural course of events of internal and external transformation with one's incorrect reactions. Keeping in mind that when the changes stop, both in the bodily and in the broader psychosomatic plane, you will come to personal completeness.
“Erasing” this completeness, lowering it will only be the time of that enemy, which today no one living in this world has coped with.
And finally, a little about the healing effect of asanas. Each yoga posture has a dual effect, general and particular. The form of the asana affects the whole organism as a whole, but it is stronger on some of its links. Yoga postures, breathing and other techniques (kriyas, bandhas) are able to eliminate diseases mainly at the stage of functional disorders. It is easier when the violation is localized. Let's say, chronic cholecystitis or adnexitis, something that medicine usually treats for years and without visible positive results.
To build a therapeutic effect through yoga, the initial state of human health, the level of flexibility and the general quality of the body, contraindications, movement restrictions, the type of nervous warehouse, character traits, living conditions, work, sleep and wakefulness, developmental characteristics in childhood, diet, habits are first determined. etc., etc. This is in addition to the main diagnosis made by official medicine. In short, one who offers yoga to a person for healing should know about this person no less than his own mother, and maybe even more. Only taking into account all the features of a particular personality and its being, it is possible to competently and reliably introduce a person into the practice of yoga. I have repeated this many times and I repeat again - yoga is one. This is an impersonal ancient technology of balancing the body and psyche. It has tremendous value and is quite applicable today, more than ever. Its time has come, just like matrix calculus, unclaimed for many years, like a curvilinear coordinate system and many other things that are long ahead of their time. Yoga is one. But people are different. Therefore, the goal of the one who teaches yoga is to adapt to it both the healthy and the sick. A professional adapts yoga to a person, a person adapts to yoga through personal practice. Adaptation begins with the body and proceeds step by step, evolutionarily, without intellectual and emotional spurring and haste. At the stage of work with the body, a person's ability to balance becomes clear, many of his hidden problems and their roots become visible. As the subject “grows” into practice, the bestowal begins. At first, of course, it is small, everything moves with difficulty, a person has no experience and has to get used to it. Therefore, in the initial stage of adaptation, the strength of character, the level of intelligence and the dominant motivation inevitably come to the fore. The more effectively a person adapts, the greater the value of return from regular asanas and pranayama.
It often happens that people over forty years old, having become acquainted with yoga and having benefited from it, understand that this is the best way to keep themselves in a healthy state for the rest of their lives. Then, having dealt with health, they move on, and yoga becomes an additional way of knowing the world and oneself. Or, having eliminated the problem, a person realizes that he does not need more and leaves yoga, however, often leaving a preventive minimum for himself. This is a personal matter for everyone. I am not saying that the practice of yoga is the best remedy for curing diseases and maintaining physical fitness, there are disorders in which the practice of yoga is completely contraindicated. There are times when nothing and no one can help. And therefore, if someone says that anything can be cured by yoga, he is either a fool, or a deceiver, or does not know the subject. It is possible to work with complex and serious diseases through Hatha Yoga, but the point is not in the method, but in who and how applies it. In serious severe cases, this is a “piece” work, with daily control and correction. If I had to do yoga for a quarter of a century and all this time somehow teach not very healthy people, then by applying the yoga method, I myself am part of this method. And in some cases - decisive.
Returning to the topic of local disorders, it should be noted that the essence of the impact of fixed body forms in yoga is as follows. Let us imagine an organism as a complex volumetric network of fluctuating values of vital parameters and interactions. In normal homeostasis, this network looks a certain way. With a local disorder, its “drawing” is distorted in some place. In the space of the human body, I mentally replace organs and systems with points and connections between them. This network is enclosed in the shape of the body. Then each asana is such a form that, in the same manner as a disease, for some time in different places “skews” this parametric network, this three-dimensional pattern. But, firstly, this distortion is minimal, and secondly, it is not a disease, we do not “get stuck” in asanas for hours and days. They “pulled” the net in one place, pulled it back, violated it with an exit to the ultimate form - they let it go. "Pressed" a number of parameters to the limit values of values - released. That is, the effect is stimulating. It shakes the body, activates its immunity. If you correctly build a sequence of asanas, it turns out that the maximum influence of each of them will be directed to the volume of the body where the disorder is localized. The most accurate at every moment of time, optimal, stimulating maximum! Each asana tenses the pattern of the network of parameters, imposing its own form on it. The intersection, "crossroads" of these lines of influence should be the affected area or organ. The sequence, vinyasa, should be such that the total effect does not exceed the strength of the stimulation effect, and that the effects themselves do not contradict, do not extinguish each other. There are disorders that do not have a clear localization, for example, various allergies or skin diseases, which are in the nature of systemic, total metabolic disorders. It happens that multiple lesions of the teeth join skin diseases. Such cases are most difficult to correct through yoga, since they require at least several years of diligent and systematic practice. At the same time, the disturbance is diffusely dissolved in the volume of the body, each section of the network of parameters is changed, and the entire field of relationships is distorted. It takes a lot of time and effort to work it out.
A properly constructed sequence of asanas and kriyas can cure functional and even organic infertility in women, I am a witness of such cases. At the beginning of our passion for yoga, we met a girl from Moscow who performed the most difficult asanas. Olga took up yoga precisely because she and her husband could not have children. Diagnosis - baby uterus, organic infertility. Once someone advised me to try yoga, and by that time Olga had been consciously practicing for more than one year and had reached such limits in the development of flexibility that sometimes, for the sake of a part-time job, she performed in a variety show at the Vostok cafe, then known in Yalta, in the room “snake woman” . For ten years she practiced fanatically, and she and her husband gave birth to a child. A few years later in Moscow, I again had to deal with infertility, this time in the form of bilateral traumatic adnexitis with various complications. Naturally, the woman was treated, long and hard. As a result, she could not sleep because of the pain, the inflammatory process began to spread, affecting other organs, and then she came to me. Two and a half years of selfless work - and the diagnosis was completely removed. Then she and her husband gave birth to a child, and he also became a fan of yoga. Now they come to me for classes three together, with their son.
I had to lead a large group - about 20 people - with infertility in 1993 in Kustanai. They were offered a certain set of asanas, abdominal kriyas, bandhas and deep relaxation. After two years, about 70% of the group had solved their problems with childbearing. However, my naive attempt to interest the directors of Moscow clinics of women's diseases in yoga with the possibility of eliminating infertility was resolutely and quickly suppressed. “Do you treat infertility? This is amazing. Even if this is true, what will we do then? This ended my attempts to establish contact with official medicine. Later, both in Russia and in America, I observed a specific layer of medical "specialists" who have one task: to bind the patient more tightly to themselves. To pay, and pay for a long time.
In 1996, in Sevastopol, I happened to encounter the "wreckage" of one of the laboratories of the famous IBMP - the Institute of Biomedical Problems. For decades, he belonged to a number of the most secret, along with the Institute of the Brain and others who dealt with the topic of man. Before “perestroika”, it included the Laboratory of Extreme Situations, which for a long time was headed by the well-known main film traveller. At one time, they tried to study yoga there, but it didn’t work, there were no testers who knew yoga. Therefore, in 1968, Dhirendra Brahmachari was invited to Moscow with a group of his students. They demonstrated to scientists an amazing control over the involuntary functions of the body. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the laboratory was stuck in Sevastopol, and the gradually declining economy of Ukraine made it necessary to spit on all secrecy for the sake of survival. A group of specialists began to treat rather complex disorders with the help of computer feedback.
Let's say your liver function is upset as a result of a disease or injury. The brain interacts closely with all organs. In a diseased liver, the nature of the feedback signals is changed. The brain “knows” that the liver is sick, and, accordingly, through it, as through the main coordinator, the work of the organs interconnected with it is rebuilt, taking into account the change in the “status” of the liver. She would have been forced to rebuild anyway, due to the pathological condition of the liver, but the brain does this centrally, “squeezing” everything possible out of the situation.
In the computer data bank there is an integral record of the biocurrents of the feedback of the liver, summarized from the data of dozens of people, this is an average, typical record of the biocurrents of a healthy organ. The greater the averaging (the Americans have several hundred or even thousands of records), the more reliable the effectiveness of the impact. A person with a diseased liver is put "under the computer". With the help of a special program and technology, a signal “from a diseased liver” is intercepted, and a computer “image” of feedback signals from a healthy organ goes to the brain. Accordingly, the brain immediately sends “commands” to its environment interconnected with the liver, so that they also rebuild their working parameters to a “healthy” mode. And the environment is really rebuilding! At the same time, pressure begins on the diseased liver from all sides, from the periphery and from the center, which prompts it to gradually shift to the normal mode.
There are also disadvantages. Each patient is also a "guinea pig", because it takes decades to create a data bank, and this is a very laborious process. In addition, it requires software virtuosity in extremely specific areas of physiology, neurophysiology, human biology, etc.
The treatment time is enormous, since changes in the state can only be evolutionary, roughly speaking, an organ or system can recover almost in the same time that it “fell” into pathology. Moreover, they actually work with quite serious diseases that are inaccessible to the effects of traditional medicine. Sometimes a person is forced to sit "at the computer" for several hours a day for a year or more. According to the amount of machine time - and the cost of treatment. What does body yoga offer in comparison? The same active influence on the periphery and even on a diseased organ, system - without intermediaries. Hundreds of hours of sitting or lying down while in contact with a computer can be used to much greater effect. Movement in asanas and their appropriate dosage have a healing effect on all its systems.
Therefore, in terms of benefits, saving time, money and a much wider beneficial effect, the future, it seems to me, is still with yoga.
I will try to outline temporary and permanent contraindications to the practice of body yoga. Immediately I would like to note the following: many of them are a ban on Hatha yoga only because it implies the absence of a qualified yoga specialist. If there is one, then it is permissible to work with 90% of the listed contraindications through asanas and pranayamas. But not in the "self-made" version! It is simply dangerous to start a practice, especially if a person is seriously ill, without an expert in Hatha Yoga. This is work at your own peril and risk, and the probability of a negative effect is quite high.
So, permanent contraindications:
The general severity of the state when energy-consuming actions are impossible, since they only worsen what is already there; only "yoga nidra" applies here;
Mental disorders;
For borderline states of the psyche - only asanas, and under the strict control of a specialist;
Organic heart disease - uncompensated defects; paroxysmal tachycardia; atrial fibrillation; aortic aneurysm, myocardial dystrophy;
Intellectual failure;
blood diseases;
Infectious lesions of the musculoskeletal system;
Severe traumatic brain injury, spinal injury with poor compensation;
Slow infections, neuroinfections;
Severe violations of the body scheme;
Malignant neoplasms.
Temporary contraindications:
Massive medication;
Exacerbation of chronic diseases;
Postoperative period;
Menstruation in women;
severe physical fatigue;
Overheating and hypothermia;
Body temperature above 37 and below 36.2 degrees;
Too hard mode of life;
Hard physical work;
Professional or sufficiently large-scale sports activities (non-rigid games, easy running and swimming are perfectly combined with yoga);
Full stomach;
Some personal properties;
Deep massage course, zhen-jiu therapy;
Staying in a steam room or sauna is permissible only after at least 6, and preferably 8 hours after practice, or 4 hours before it.
Concluding the general theme of the body in the context of yoga, before moving on to the internal technique of performing asanas, I will give an excerpt from Verhaarn - an image of what happens to a person if he does not take care of his body:
“The blood of your fathers and grandfathers will turn sour in you,
become strong like them, you are not destined.
For life, without knowing its sorrows and passions,
you will look like a sick person through the window.
And the skin will dry out. And thoughts will fade.
And boredom will eat into the flesh, destroying desires,
and dreams will ossify in your skull,
and horror from the mirrors will look at you.
On a cold Saturday afternoon in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher for nearly four decades whose loyal clients include a number of stars and renowned gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpa Yoga Studio, Manhattan. In many ways, Black is a classic yogi: he trained at the institute founded by the legendary B.K.S. Iyengar in Pune, India, and spent several years in solitude and meditation. He now lives in Rhinebeck, New York and often teaches at the nearby Omega Institute, an exoteric center covering about 200 acres of woods and gardens.
He is known for his strictly defined and down to earth style. But that was not the reason I was looking for him: As I was told, Black was the right person to talk to if you want to know not about the virtues of yoga, but about the harm it can cause.
Many regular clients came to him to work on their bodies and rehabilitate after yoga injuries. I was in the same situation. In my 40s, I somehow managed to rupture a disc in my lower back and found that I could avoid bouts of pain with certain yoga posture choices and abdominal exercises. Then, in 2007, while doing the wide angle pose, a pose that was famous as a cure for many diseases, my back broke. After that, my belief, naive at the time, that yoga is only a source of healing and no harm, disappeared.
At Sankalpa Yoga, the hall was full, about half of the students, as it was said, were teachers themselves. Black walked around the hall, joking and talking.
"Is this yoga?" he asked as we sweated through a pose that seemed to require superhuman stamina. "Yes, if you practice mindfully."
His approach was almost free form: he made us hold the pose for a long time, but taught a few classical poses without any variations. Throughout the practice, he urged us to focus on pain.
“I give you the maximum load,” he told the group. “It’s up to you whether to make it smaller or not.”
On the way to the hotel, he told an instructive story. He remembered how in India one yogi came to study at the Iyengar school and dislocated his spine himself. Black said he watched in amazement as three of his ribs snapped - crack, crack, crack.
After the class, I asked Black about his approach to teaching yoga—emphasis on a few simple poses, no common variations like headstands and shoulderstands. He gave me the kind of response you would expect from any yoga teacher: awareness is much more important than rushing through a lot of poses just to say that you have mastered them. But then he said something more radical.
Black came to the conclusion that the vast majority of people should quit yoga. She can do harm very easily.
Black says that not only students, but also famous teachers cripple themselves in large numbers, because most have hidden physical weaknesses or problems that inevitably cause serious injury. Instead of yoga, he said, "they need special exercises for the joints and improvement of the internal organs" to strengthen the weak points of the body.
“Yoga is a practice for healthy people. Or it can be used for therapeutic purposes. But, as contradictory as it may sound, yoga is not suitable for group classes. "
Black seems to regulate the dangers of yoga during his practice, diligently trying to understand when a student "shouldn't be doing a certain action - doing a shoulder stand or a headstand, or putting stress on the cervical vertebrae." And while he studied with Shmuel Tatz, the legendary Manhattan physiotherapist who developed the massage and straightening method for actors and dancers, he admits he doesn't have a formal practice to determine which positions are right for a student and which can be problematic. According to him, what he definitely has is "a lot of experience."
“You can’t come to New York and have a class with people who have a lot of problems, while saying, “so, today we will do this sequence of poses,” it just won’t work.”
According to Black, several factors increase the risk for yoga practitioners. The most important factor is the demographic change among those involved in it. Indian yoga practitioners used to sit cross-legged on the ground on a daily basis, and the yoga postures or asanas were just an extension of these postures.
Modern office workers, after sitting on chairs all day, come to the gym a couple of times a week and try to twist into the most difficult poses for which they have neither flexibility nor health. Many people come to yoga as a calm alternative to active sports or for rehabilitation after injuries. But the explosive growth in popularity of yoga (in the US the number of yoga practitioners rose from 4 million in 2001 to, by some estimates, up to 20 million in 2011) means that there are now many halls where teachers do not have the education needed to determine when a student may be injured.
“Today, many yoga schools put pressure on people,” Black said. “You won’t believe what they are doing there - instructors rush at people, push them, pull them and say: but now you should be able to do this. All this is an attempt to please your ego.
When such yoga instructors come to him for treatment with serious injuries, Black tells them - "Give up yoga!"
"They look at me like I'm crazy," he continues. "And I know if they keep doing it, they won't be able to heal."
I asked him about the most serious injuries he had ever seen. He talked about famous yoga teachers who practiced basic poses such as downward dog, where the body forms an inverted V, so hard that they tore their Achilles tendons.
“It's all ego,” he said. “But the meaning of yoga is to get rid of the ego.”
He said he saw and terrible thighs«.
"One of the best teachers in America has completely lost mobility in his hip joint," Black told me. “The articular fossae collapsed to such an extent that she had to have prosthetics.” I asked if she continued to teach. "Oh yes," Blake replied. - There are other teachers with such sick spines that they have to teach lying down. I would be ashamed."
Among yoga devotees, from gurus to their assistants, constantly carrying rolled up mats, it is widely believed that the miraculous healing and restorative power of yoga. They say that yoga calms, heals, raises energy and strengthens.
And a lot of this actually turned out to be true:
yoga can lower blood pressure, produce natural antidepressants, or even improve your sex life.
But the yoga community has long remained silent about what an overwhelming pain she can cause. Jagannath G. Gun, one of those who brought yoga into modern times, left no hint of trauma in his journal Yoga Mimamsa or his 1931 book Asanas. Indra Devi avoided such references in her 1953 bestselling book, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, as did B.K.S. Iyengar in his work "Light on Yoga", published in 1965. Assurances about the safety of yoga are contained in the manuals of such yogis as Swami Sivananda, K. Pattabhi Jois and Bikram Chowdhury.
“Real yoga is as safe as mother's milk,” proclaimed Sivananda, a guru who has made 10 world tours and founded ashrams on several continents.
But a growing body of medical evidence supports Glenn Black's view that for many people, certain widely practiced postures undeniably carry risks.
First reports of yoga injuries appeared several decades ago and were published in the world's most recognized journals: among them such as Neurology, the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Problems ranged from relatively minor injuries to permanent disability . In one case, a college student who had been practicing yoga for over a year decided to step up his practice. He sat on his knees, in the posture known as vajrasana, for several hours a day, praying for world peace. He soon found that he had difficulty walking, running, and climbing stairs.
Doctors diagnosed him with a problem with the branch of the sciatic nerve that runs from the lower part of the spinal column, through the buttocks and down the legs. Sitting in the vajrasana pose reduced the blood supply to the knee, which caused the nerve to become dead. As soon as the student gave up this posture, his condition quickly improved. Clinicians noted a number of such cases, and this disease even got its own name: “ yoga leg failure«.
More disturbing reports followed. In 1972, renowned Oxford neurophysiologist W. Rich Russell published an article in the British Medical Journal stating that although extremely rare, certain yoga poses can cause stroke even in relatively young and healthy people. Russell discovered that brain damage can be caused not only by direct trauma to the skull, but also by the rapid movements of the neck or excessive neck flexion that occurs during trauma or in certain yoga postures.
Normally, the neck can bend 75 degrees back, 40 degrees forward, 45 degrees to the sides, and rotate 50 degrees left and right. Yoga practitioners usually bend the spine much more. The average student can easily turn their head 90 degrees, which is twice the limit.
The hyperflexibility of the neck is encouraged by experienced teachers. Iyengar emphasized that in the cobra pose the head should lean back as far as possible and insisted that in the shoulder stand, where the chin is pressed against the chest, the head forms a right angle with the body, "the body should be extended in a straight line perpendicular to the floor". He called this position, supposedly stimulating the thyroid gland, "one of the most valuable gifts presented to mankind by wise ancestors."
Russell warned that extreme movements of the head and neck could injure the vertebral arteries, leading to the formation of blood clots, their swelling and compression, with subsequent damage to the brain.
Russell was also concerned that when yoga practitioners had a stroke, doctors might not be able to track down the cause. Brain damage, he writes,
"may not appear immediately, for example at night, and this delay of several hours diverts attention from the original precipitating factor."
In 1973, a year after the publication of Russell's work, renowned specialist in the rehabilitation of back injuries from Cornell University Medical College, Dr. Willibald Nagler, published an article about a strange case.
A healthy 28-year-old woman suffered a stroke while doing a pose known in yoga as the "wheel" or "backbend". When performing this pose, a person lies on his back, then raises his torso and bends into an arc, leaning on his arms and legs. Those with little experience often lift their torso while leaning on their heads as well. When the woman was in this position, leaning on her head with her neck thrown back, she suddenly experienced a severe throbbing headache. She could not stand up on her own, and when they helped her, she couldn't walk on her own. The woman was immediately taken to the hospital. The right side of the body was numb, the left arm and leg did not obey well, the eyes involuntarily squinted to the left. She also had a constricted pupil in her left eye, her upper eyelid trembled, and her lower eyelid was raised. All this is a series of symptoms that characterize the so-called Bernard-Horner syndrome. Nagler also noted that the woman was falling on her left side.
Her attending physicians revealed a significant narrowing of the left vertebral artery, which runs between the first two cervical vertebrae, as well as an acute displacement of the arteries that feed the brain. Since there was not enough good tomography equipment at the time, exploratory surgery was performed to identify the exact causes of her injuries. After opening the cranium, doctors found areas of dead tissue on the left hemisphere of the brain and the localization of a secondary hemorrhage. The reason for this was insufficient blood circulation.
The patient began a course of intensive rehabilitation. She was able to walk, as Nagler reported, with a "wide, free step" after 2 years of treatment, but Bernard-Horner's syndrome was still present in her left arm and left eye. Nagler concluded that although such cases are rare, they should serve as a warning about the dangers of excessive stress on the neck. He called for caution in recommending these postures, especially when recommending them to the elderly.
This case of Nagler's patient is not the only one. A few years later, a 25-year-old patient was rushed to Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital complaining of blurred vision, difficulty swallowing, and loss of control of the left side of the body. Steven G. Hanus, a medical student at the time, became interested in this case and, together with the head of the department of neurology, began a joint study of the cause of these disorders (he published the results of the study later with several colleagues). The patient was perfectly healthy and practiced yoga every morning for a year and a half. His exercises began with upper torso twists to the sides, during which he also turned his head to the left and right as much as possible. The patient then did a shoulder stand on the bare floor, bending the neck and pressing, as Iyengar yoga says, "as close to the floor as possible", holding the pose for about five minutes. A young man has formed on the back of his head hematomas, which, as recorded in the Archives of Neurology, were the result of "repeated contact of the back of the head with the surface of the floor on which the patient practiced yoga." These hematomas were a sign of cervical hernia. Diagnosis revealed a blockade of the left vertebral artery between the second and third vertebrae, the blood vessels were "almost or completely blocked", in other words - the blood could not flow to the brain.
Two months after the stroke, after intensive physical therapy, the patient began to walk with a cane, however, as the doctors noted, "the patient still had pronounced difficulty in trying to make a gentle movement with his left hand." Hanus and his colleagues concluded that this patient's condition was a new kind of danger. Doctors have warned that "neck movements with disregard for the level of physical activity" can lead to serious damage to the vertebral arteries, even in healthy people. They emphasized that " yoga should be considered as a possible cause of stroke". In their report to the study, a team of doctors from Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital referred not only to Dr. Nagler's conclusion on a patient, but also to Mr. Russell's warning. After that, the issue of the safety of yoga began to worry the entire medical community.
These cases may seem like exceptions, but research by the Consumer Safety Commission has shown that in recent years there has been a sharp increase in increased the number of people who applied to emergency rooms due to injuries after yoga classes. The figure increased from 13 in 2000 to 20 in 2001. Then, in 2002, the number of applicants more than doubled to 46.
These studies are based more on comparisons of data than on detailed reports. They show trends rather than bottom line results, even though trend peaks remain statistically important. Very few victims go to emergency rooms. Those whose yoga injuries were less severe went to their family doctor, chiropractors, and other doctors.
Around this time, stories began to appear in the media about those affected by yoga. The Times newspaper reported from medical professionals that, for example, Bikram Yoga "deep warming" exercises increase risk of sprains, muscle damage and torn ligaments. One specialist noted that tendons - strong fibers of muscle tissue that connect bones or cartilage in a joint - do not restore their shape even after one overload, which increases the risk of sprain, dislocation and displacement of the joint.
In 2009, a team of scientists from the Medical College of Surgery and General Medicine at Columbia University published results of a large survey of yoga instructors, physiotherapists and other doctors. According to the results of the survey, where people answered the question of what was the most serious injury (after which a person recovered for a long time and / or became disabled) they faced, it was noted that the most serious injury (231 answers) was a lower back injury . Next in descending order are shoulder injury (219 responses), knee injury (174 responses), neck injury (110 responses). Then the number of responses is followed by a stroke.
Respondents identified 4 cases where yoga exercises of increased complexity led to brain damage to one degree or another. The number was not threatening, but the recognition of the existing risk - almost 40 years after the first warning of Mr. Russell - indicates a significant shift in understanding of how dangerous yoga can be.
In recent years, activists have appeared in the circle of yoga lovers who have begun to draw everyone's attention to the possible harm from yoga. In 2003 in the Yoga Journal, a yoga instructor and physical therapist at the Center for Integrative Medicine at Duke University in North Carolina. In this article, she shared the problems she faced. She said that she once took part in the filming of a television show broadcast throughout the country. During filming, she was told to hold the pose longer. She had to lift one leg, grasp her big toe with her hand, and straighten her leg, as described in the outstretched hand to the big toe pose. When she straightened her leg, she heard a very unpleasant crack in the place of the hamstring. The next day she could hardly walk.
It took Carol a year of physical therapy and a year of rehab before she could straighten her leg again. The editor of the Yoga Journal, Caitlin Quistgaard, described her case when she tore a ligament in her shoulder girdle muscles while doing yoga. "
I know from my own experience that yoga can heal,” she wrote, “but I now also know that it can also cripple, and I have heard this many times from others who practice yoga.”
One of the most notable activists is Roger Cole, an Iyengar yoga instructor with a degree in psychology from Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco. Cole has written many articles for the Yoga Journal and lectures on yoga safety at the American College of Sports Medicine. In one of his articles, he discussed the possibility of minimal neck bending in the "shoulder stand" by placing folded towels under the shoulders, while lowering the head below the towels. This allows you to increase the angle of the neck relative to the body from 90 degrees to perhaps 110 degrees. Cole highlighted the dangers of doing this stance without using a shoulder pad: stretching of muscles, tendons and trauma of the cervical vertebrae.
But such a change in posture is not always the solution. Medical editor of the Yoga Journal, physician Timothy McCall says headstands are too dangerous for beginners in yoga. His fears were based in part on his own experience. He found that the headstand can lead to " scalene syndrome"- a condition that occurs as a result of compression of the nerves that run from the neck to the arms. The person feels a tingling in the right hand, there is a sudden numbness. When Mr. McCall came out of this posture, all symptoms disappeared. He later noted that this pose can lead to other injuries, including degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine and retinal tears resulting from increased pressure in the eyes during this stance.
"Unfortunately," concluded Mr. McCall, "the negative effects of such stances may not show up immediately."
Almost a year after I met Glenn Black at his Manhattan workshop, I received an email from him saying that he had undergone spinal surgery. He wrote that everything went well. The recovery will be long and painful, and he also offered to call him back when I could.
The cause of the injury, Black said, was exercises with very low back bends and torso twists that he did for 40 years. He developed stenosis- a serious disease of the spine, in which the space between the vertebrae narrows, squeezing the nerves and causing wild pain. Black said he experienced pain 20 years ago when coming out of plow and shoulder-stand poses. Two years ago, the pain became simply unbearable. One surgeon told him that without surgery he would soon be unable to walk. The operation lasted 5 hours, I had to fasten several lumbar vertebrae together. Over time, his condition will return to normal, but the doctor strongly recommended to reduce the load on the lower back. He will never again be able to move the way he could before the operation.
Glenn Black is one of the most careful yogis I have ever met. When we first met, he assured me that he had never had an injury from yoga practice, nor did any of his students. I asked him if his recent injury could be the result of a congenital disease or age-related changes. He replied that yoga was the cause after all.
“If what you are doing may one day harm you, you should look at this activity from the other side.”
With this point of view, Black spoke at a conference at the Omega Institute, reinforcing his opinion on the problem with thoughts about a recent operation. But it seemed that no one heard him.
He recalls:
“I was more determined than usual. I wanted to convey to the audience that Asana Yoga is not a panacea for all diseases. In fact, if you do yoga too zealously or even obsessively, then in the end it can lead to problems. A lot of people didn't like hearing that."