Julian Walker

When I took my first yoga class at Ana Forrest’s Santa Monica studio in 1992, I was quite proud of my straddle splits. I had been working with my genetically inflexible body for the previous three years in a home practice sourced from a library book, combined with some martial arts training I had picked up London—and I thought I was pretty darn impressive. That is, until the teacher—who I recognized from my childhood watching American television in South Africa as the actress who had shot J.R. on Dallas—guided us into a variation of pigeon pose.

I’ll never forget that first moment of intense burning tightness, and the feeling state of confusion and fear as I found myself in this new experience. My lateral hip rotators had simply never been stretched!

Worse still, I wanted to cry. Immediately. In front of one of my teenage TV crushes.

I was no longer a masterful egoic ninja showing off my splits. This was pure out-of-control vulnerability. It brought me directly back to the experience of being 12 years old and back in Johannesburg bending over the desk of our headmaster’s office as he prepared to punish me. I knew this would entail a thin and flexible wooden cane whipping across my buttocks six times. We called it “six of the best.”

Whether or not you have ever been subject to corporal punishment, you may be nodding along here, recognizing the similarity in the intensity of your first encounter with the relationship between yoga postures and the emotions-in-the-body.

The practice of yoga, with its tools of mindful present attention, self-compassion and breath, and the intention to grow, heal and become more free, will inevitably lead us to come up against the constrictions that trauma creates in our bodies and minds.

Perhaps it is helpful to share the standard dictionary definition of trauma: “A deeply distressing or disturbing experience.” A trauma can be any overwhelming experience that leaves an imprint on how we react to life. As such, trauma limits our ability to be present, to feel resilient, worthwhile and empowered. It blocks our ability to respond in fluid and self-aware ways to our world and to one another. On the yoga mat, the practice of being present with ourselves through shifting postures, breath patterns, thoughts, and emotional reactions can bring us face-to-face or body-to-body with unresolved traumas. I would argue, in fact, that if the practice is effective, this is inevitable.

Since my own experience in the first few years of my practice, I have been fascinated with studying this phenomenon. I have committed to doing deep healing work on myself and I have supported many others in healing their own trauma through the vehicle of yoga practice.

Our modern understanding of how yoga can be meaningful in addressing trauma is augmented by newer fields of study including somatic psychology and neuroscience. Yet these are not new ideas: both the Buddha and Patanjali discussed how the inner work of bringing awareness and compassion to kleshas (the perceptions and obstacles in the mind) and samskaras (patterns laid down by old experiences) can interrupt how old experiences and perceptions color our present time.

Scientific evidence is building up to confirm that the patterns sages observed through meditation relate to nervous system’s pathways; unaddressed, these pathways can still carry the associations of past events that were overwhelming or distressing.

Emotions, memories of traumatic experiences, and patterns of physical tension are all related. For most people, effectively traveling the path of embodied liberation that yoga represents will at some point include facing their own personal demons on the mat.

Even though yoga teachers usually don’t have the tools, education, or intentions of a psychotherapist, they still have responsibility to be aware that the arising of traumatic material on the yoga mat is a common occurrence. In fact, this may even be part of the work that emerges when people are guided into being present, reflecting on their lives, and observing the flow of embodied experience. The yoga room may be a place where healing of traumatic patterns takes place.

In this light here are some suggestions to support this healing potential:

Yoga students: Know that everyone needs healing in some way. Your practice is an opportunity to develop compassion for yourself and others; compassion is precious commodity to cultivate as life can be hard and painful. Allow the energies of bliss, empowerment, community, and gratitude that arise in yoga to come into contact with the places where you are wounded and your growth will truly soar!

Yoga teachers: Keep doing your own inner work. The more teachers continue to heal and grow, the more there is to offer students. The less judgment, denial, or ego teachers have around our own imperfections and vulnerability, the more students will intuitively feel safe to open up authentically in the space that teachers hold.

This can be tricky in a yoga culture that often expresses an unrealistic ideal of empowerment and positivity that can run counter to a compassionate understanding of trauma. As teachers we may be repeating some of these ideas and beliefs in an authoritative way, just because they are so ubiquitous in spiritual culture, and also because they can often serve a kind of defensive protection against acknowledging the reality that bad things can and do happen to good people.

Chief among these is the idea that attention on the present moment means that any thoughts about the past or future are wrong, illusory, or unspiritual.

Perhaps it is helpful to reframe: Being present does not mean disconnecting from our lives or feelings. Being present can include becoming aware of how we are affected by the past. Gaining mindful insight about the origin of our reactions and feelings supports healing and integration.

The popular New Age idea that no one is ever victimized because we all create our own reality may for some people feel empowering and metaphysically valid. But in healing trauma, there is a value to consciously honoring the feelings of in fact having been unfairly treated, violated, and harmed through no fault of our own.  

Feelings of helplessness around such events is natural as are moments of deep grief, fear or anger. Healing happens when we find the safety and support to be with these feelings as they are, and then move through them —discovering resilience, self-compassion, and dignity in the process.

Creating a safe space includes not confusing students in those vulnerable moments with statements that may inadvertently imply that those feelings are wrong or shameful.

Our language as teachers can either shame, minimize or deny the reality of trauma and difficult emotions, or it can normalize, encourage compassion and support our students in being authentically present in ways that promote healing.

Acknowledging inner work as a process. It will contain the full spectrum of sensations, feelings, and thoughts; it does not impose a preconceived ideal or belief system.

Some of the following cues can support holding space for inner work:

“Bring breath and compassionate presence to whatever shows up in your practice today.”

“Come as you are, work with what is, and honor the journey that brings you into the room.”

As I say in most of my classes, any time we come together to practice, there are people who are grieving, celebrating, in love, heart-broken, disillusioned, or even inspired. All life involves change and transition and in community, we take turns experiencing the facets of the human condition. They are all felt in the body. Some of them are traumatic. Some of those feelings may surprise us in the middle of a pose, even if we have practiced many times before. Holding all of it in a non-judging, compassionate awareness is the heart of a yoga that heals.

Julian Walker is a yoga and meditation teacher, bodyworker and ecstatic dance facilitator in LA. He is co-founder of the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training: ahemyogateachertraining.com.

Julian Walker

Julian Walker is a yoga and meditation teacher, bodyworker and ecstatic dance facilitator in LA. He is co-founder of the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training: ahemyogateachertraining.com.

www.ahemyogateachertraining.com

The post Come As You Are appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt writes that he considered the Buddha to be the greatest psychologist of the last three thousand years, until Haidt’s research revealed something interesting: passionate engagement with what matters to us in life is key to finding resilience, meaning and fulfillment – not a life lived in dispassionate nonattachment. Haidt, an associate professor at the University of Virginia and a leading light in the positive psychology movement, says we know now that the strongest indicators for human happiness are meaningful intimate relationships with others, along with a sense of purpose in our work and feeling like part of a community. But he doesn’t discard the dharma completely. On the contrary, The Happiness Hypothesis asserts that meditation is one of the only methods validated by research for overcoming depression and positively retraining the brain.

This got me thinking about my own journey. As a diligent meditator and yogi in my twenties, I aspired to what I thought of as a Buddha-like freedom from attachments. The ideal for me was to become a still point of centered awareness: unmoved by life, not needing anyone or anything, free from worldly ambitions – and living, I now see, at a safe distance from my emotions. For me finding balance through my thirties meant seeing that my practice was in some ways perpetuating a kind of disconnection from feeling and living fully. There was also a way it was preventing me from loving deeply. It has taken time and effort to integrate an embrace of my body and heart into what was a very mental and somewhat escapist approach to spirituality, and to realize that it is in the rest of my life that the fruits of my time on the yoga mat and meditation cushion are truly revealed.

My journey into balance includes using both yoga practice and the Buddha’s vipassana meditation as a way to dive deeply into my body and mind. I have had to relearn how to work with the natural emotions, desires and needs that are part of this human experience. What was missing in my earlier practice was compassion and self-acceptance. I came to understand that this had deep psychological roots not only in myself, but also in the common spiritual desire to transcend our vulnerable and mortal humanity. This lack of intimacy with myself was reflected in my personal relationships. Practicing in this new way began to profoundly impact my ability to love and be loved.

In discussing the importance of love relationships, Haidt draws on the research of Harry Harlow and John Bowlby that became the foundation for something called attachment theory.

In Harlow and Bowlby’s defining experiment, baby monkeys were given the choice between a wire mommy doll with a milk-giving tube and one covered in soft cloth without a feeding tube. They would routinely choose the soft mommy, demonstrating their need for soothing physical contact over and above even the need for food. Haidt writes about how our early sense of love, safety and bonding with our care-givers shapes not only how we show up in our adult romantic relationships but also how we eventually relate to our own children. All of this has to do with how we form healthy attachments, and how at both the psychological and biological levels we need to love and be loved to be healthy. The research confirms that physical affection and compassionate relating literally balance our nervous and immune systems, build resilience in response to stress, allow our brains to grow in healthy ways and give us confidence and trust in others and the world around us.

Perhaps how we use the word “attachment” in a spiritual sense may need to be more carefully nuanced. Of course it is good to practice releasing our unhealthy attachments: the ways in which we become fixated and clingy in unconscious ways. But underneath some of the grasping which the Buddha warned about so eloquently may well be a deeper need for healthy attachment; the loving closeness and connections with others that are the bedrock of what it means to be human.

One of the things I love about practice-based spirituality is that it is a living tradition: an evolving, transforming inquiry into inner and outer reality. This subtle but powerful shift in how we think of attachment can be incorporated into how we interpret spiritual practice in a modern context. We can now validate that meditative practices retrain the brain in a myriad of powerful ways. These vary from gaining access to states of consciousness in which we feel a deep timeless union with the cosmos, to deepening our capacity for compassion and moral reasoning, to helping us resolve and heal painful memories and emotions, to literally “charging up” areas of the brain that express our capacity for positive emotion. These spiritual gifts can allow us to engage in our work lives in ways that generate creative flow, and a meaningful sense of purpose. The right balance of healthy attachment and being able to let go of compulsive clinging may also affect our interpersonal ability to bond and relate intimately with others. This can only increase our capacity for joyful, connected living.

Julian Walker

Julian Walker is a yoga and meditation teacher, bodyworker and ecstatic dance facilitator in LA. He is co-founder of the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training: ahemyogateachertraining.com.

www.ahemyogateachertraining.com

The post Science And The Sacred: Love, Happiness And Attachment appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

The breakthrough technology of functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) – which allows us to track the areas of the brain that are active, while actually engaged in tasks or activities, has found a more complex mirror neuron system in human beings, as compared to the simple mirror neurons in the macaque example. The application of mirror neurons in rehabilitating injuries is being studied, since a person could watch someone else performing a physical task and engage the brain function. There may also be profound spiritual implications. In my workshop exercise, I wanted to facilitate a shift out of the realm of verbal instruction and into this more immediate transmission of mind-body information; this wasn’t just monkey-see, monkey-do – I had an additional, deeper intention.

It turns out that some theorists (amongst them Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal) believe the mirror neuron system may be involved in how we feel empathy, which is the capacity to intuit someone else’s feelings and imagine them as our own. It is the case that there are mirror neurons for emotions as well as for movement. Studies by Christian Keysers at the Social Brain Lab in the Netherlands show a correlation between experiencing more emotional empathy and having a high degree of activity in the movement mirror neurons. This suggests that the two systems may be linked.

Before I demonstrated the Yoga sequence, the group was practicing Buddhist metta or loving-kindness meditation. We focused first on self-compassion and then on feeling loving-kindness for a beloved. Next, in pairs, the meditators meditated on compassion for each other. After they observed my movements, they took turns witnessing each other flow through the initial sequence I had demonstrated. At the end of each round, the instruction was for the active partner to stand with their eyes closed and imagine breathing one of a sequence of specific feeling states throughout their own body. We worked with courage, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness as our states. The witnessing partner was to be receptive to what they saw and felt.

As the facilitator, it was inspiring to witness the intimate and generous sharing of energy and attention in the room. Several people shed smiling tears of recognition in response to my asking if their connection to one of the feeling qualities had deepened or been enhanced through this process.

I also had a personal revelation with regard to teaching Yoga. After teaching for several years, I found that I was walking around the room and giving verbal instruction much more than I was demonstrating the postures. Including this new brain research in my workshop has influenced my return to regularly demonstrating more of the postures. I have been enjoying mirroring the class physically for certain standing pose sequences. They can see me move into the pose as I describe it and follow me there using both visual and verbal cues. By linking the process of seeing me in the pose, the felt experience of this in the body while cultivating compassionate awareness and positive feeling states, a complete sense of integration in the practice came about.

Julian Walker

Julian Walker is a yoga and meditation teacher, bodyworker and ecstatic dance facilitator in LA. He is co-founder of the Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind yoga teacher training: ahemyogateachertraining.com.

www.ahemyogateachertraining.com

The post Science and The Sacred: Mirrors Of Compassion appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.