Yoga: Transforming the Whole Body
Written by Cheryl Gustafson
Yoga teaches that humans are multidimensional beings. If holistic health practices are to be effective, they must also be multidimensional. Yoga is just such a system. Let’s take a look at how yoga works.
The Five Dimensions of the Human System:
The Physical
Students new to yoga often believe that progress in yoga means perfecting increasingly difficult postures, as the exercises in yoga are called. They soon discover (happily) that yoga is not about postures, it’s about people. Everyone’s needs are different, and those needs change over time. Progress in yoga is not measured by whether you can touch your toes but by the quality of attention you bring to each pose and by your ability to adapt to whatever life is offering you at the moment.
Kripalu Yoga, which I teach in Huntingdon and State College, is based on a slow-motion posture flow, which is accompanied by a special type of deep breathing. Merging movement with breath requires a degree of concentration that is usually not present in other forms of exercise. Two things begin to happen as a result of this internal focus. One, the mind is cleared of obsessive thoughts, and, two, tension is released in the body, leaving us both energized and relaxed. Each session feels like a small vacation.
Kay Swivel is a retired public-school teacher. She has been coming to yoga class in Huntingdon for six years. “That’s one reason I keep coming back,” she says. “I always feel so good at the end of class. It’s wonderful. I feel so calm and relaxed.” Although Kay is often the oldest student in class, she says she doesn’t mind. “I like trying to keep up with the young people,” she says, and she has even tried out the vigorous yoga class.
People often believe the words vigorous and yoga are mutually exclusive, but yoga is not necessarily defined by gentleness. In Huntingdon, I’ve offered beginner, intermediate, and vigorous classes. The vigorous class draws students hoping to increase their stamina and endurance and who want to challenge themselves with demanding poses that release tension at ever deepening levels.
Amanda Thomas, an outdoor educator at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center and caretaker of the Juniata College Field Station at Lake Raystown, has been practicing yoga for five years and attends the vigorous class. “I was surprised at how strong yoga has made me,” she says. “I thought I was already strong. And it’s not just on a physical level. I’m more stable now. Yoga has given me an inner strength.”
Art Cassott, an anesthetist at J. C. Blair Memorial Hospital, started doing yoga two years ago because he wanted more flexibility. His neck was particularly stiff. “Now I have full range of motion in my neck,” he says. “I notice it especially when I drive. My flexibility is better. My balance is better.”
Improved balance, greater strength, and increased flexibility are some of the gifts of a regular yoga practice, regardless of your age or your physical condition when you begin. But Art says the calming influence of yoga has had the biggest impact on his life.
The Emotions
Each emotion we experience is accompanied by a particular breathing pattern. We are all familiar with the shallow breath of fear, the sudden gasp of surprise, the slow, relaxed breathing of a sleeping child. In yoga, we learn to stay in touch with the breath and to breathe fully and deeply in order to energize the system and to help stabilize the emotions.
Beth Smolcic is the Director of the English as a Second Language program at Juniata College. She has been practicing yoga for 20 years. She says, “The breathing exercises have made it easier for me to step back and not always get immediately involved emotionally when things start happening, to have a little distance.”
Art agrees. “I have better control of my emotions now,” he says. “I’m less volatile, less prone to outbursts. The change has been so gradual, maybe others don’t notice as much as I do.”
Beth and Art are developing the ability to detach from a situation, to fully feel emotions as they arise but not necessarily act on them. Though emotion is a necessary survival tool, yoga encourages balancing emotion with reason.
The Intellect
The mind allows us to perceive, to understand, and to choose, based on the information received from the senses. Because we so often perceive, understand, and choose incorrectly, yoga stresses the importance of developing the mind. In yoga postures we learn to direct and focus attention by cultivating breath awareness and by continually returning to physical sensations. This intense inward concentration frees the mind of its incessant chatter, allowing it to open to receive fresh information, which can then be used to make responsible, creative choices. With practice, clarity of mind and alertness are carried off the yoga mat and into everyday life.
Sally Oberle works with data base management and has been practicing yoga for six months. “Yoga promotes clear thinking,” she says. “It encourages self-awareness and awareness of one’s surroundings. I’ve become more conscious of my diet, and I’m trying to improve my nutrition. I’m eating more vegetables and whole grains.” She says that when conflicts arise in her life, she now tries to be more understanding and to use reason rather than becoming argumentative or confrontational.
To further develop the mind, we spend time in class studying the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, an ancient text on yoga, and discuss ways the teachings apply to our lives today. Kay says she appreciates the mind-expanding qualities of studying yogic philosophy: “It has caused me to think about things, things I hadn’t even known about before.”
The sensitivity that develops through yoga practice causes an astonishing thing to happen. As our consciousness deepens, we become increasingly aware of how thousands of moment-to-moment choices each day determine the quality of our lives, and we see that those choices are often not choices at all. They are simply habitual, conditioned responses that, with practice, can be changed.
The Personality
Our personality is the unique way each of us has of showing up in the world, and it is the personality that may have the greatest potential for transformation through the practice of sustained, focused attention known as meditation.
Ancient yogis believed that our basic beliefs, our predispositions, drives, and motives are based on two things: our genes and the things that have happened to us. We cannot change our genetic code, but we can begin to look at our conditioning.
A mirror will accurately reflect any objects that are placed upon it. If the mirror is imperfect, it will distort and obscure these objects. In much the same way, our attitudes and beliefs shape and distort our perceptions. In a sense, they create our world. Through the practice of meditation, we reduce distractions and begin to access a progressively clearer reality. It is through this clarity of mind that we can recognize conditioned patterns of behavior that we may wish to refine.
Ellen Filson has been practicing yoga for six years. She says yoga has given her the freedom to express her opinions and feelings. “In the past,” says Ellen, “I would not speak up. Now I do. Yoga brought me out of my shell. I have more patience now, with myself, my children, with life in general.”
One reason Ellen came to yoga class in the first place was to meet new people, and, as is true with most students, she finds the camaraderie in the class very important to the overall experience.
The Heart
The human system does not exist in isolation but within a rich network of relationships, a society, and external environment. It is this relatedness that the ancients believed to be the deepest aspect of our being. In meditation, this oneness is revealed to us, not as an intellectual concept but as a deep, inner knowing.
“I’m exploring and learning about my quirks,” says Amanda. “You always tell us in class that every day we’re different, and I see now that other people are the same way. We have all these different elements to us, and we change from day to day. I’ve learned to be more forgiving.”
“I see things more gently now,” says Sue Carlson, who has been practicing for six years. “I’m more accepting, kinder in my outlook toward life. I see that there are two sides to every story.”
The fulfillment we receive from our relationships, our work, and our many achievements is immensely satisfying, but it does have its ups and downs. The ancient yogis believed that lasting fulfillment and joy come only by developing a conscious connection to our source. Cultivation of that connection is, indeed, the ultimate aim of yoga and of our lives.
“For me, there’s a sense of communion,” says Sally. “I’m connecting to others in the class, and I’ve found a way to connect to my inner spirit. I see that yoga isn’t necessarily married to a certain religion or belief system. It can cross over any theology or ideology and be personalized in a way that best suites the individual.”
Art says, “For me, yoga and relaxation start to merge with prayer.”
Human beings are multidimensional beings. Yoga is a discipline that can be used for the integration and transformation of the human system at every level, body, emotion, intellect, personality, and the heart. Just ask the Huntingdon yoga students.
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Cheryl (Belew) Gustafson has been practicing yoga for over 30 years and has been teaching yoga since 1979. For information, contact her at cherylg19@hotmail.com.