Thoughts on Yoga
RUTH ANNE'S ADDRESS TO THE WOMEN'S BUSINESS OWNERS ASSOCIATION
2005-05-19
Today I would like to speak about a model I call "ultimate wellness", as illustrated by the recent explosion of interest in yoga, pilates and meditation. In the "ultimate wellness" model, the individual's capacity for health, happiness and well–being is limitless. Rather than thinking in terms of "norms," ultimate wellness seeks to deliver the best and highest quality of life possible.
I'm grouping together these three art forms, yoga, pilates and meditation, because I personally teach and practice them. They also have a natural affinity with one another. I have found that each supports the other in critical ways. Practicing all three has been powerfully transformative for my body and mind.
First, let's define some terms. Yoga is a system of physical and mental training that derives from Indian philosophy and medicine. Yoga is many thousands of years old. Yoga in the US is more physical than the original yoga of India. In fact, most modern yoga in India has few or no postures or exercises and is mostly meditation and controlled breathing. So when we say "Yoga" we really mean the type of yoga that emphasises postures and physical culture. Pilates is a system of movement, based on yoga, martial arts, dance, and other physical conditioning systems. It is named after Joseph Pilates, whose life spanned much of the 20th century and who pioneered the work. Pilates has two kinds of exercises: those performed on a mat and those that require special pilates equipment. Most classes focus on the mat exercises, which are considered the basis for the system. "Meditation" describes particular mental exercises that guide the individuals' awareness in a controlled way. Yoga and pilates have both been described at "meditation in motion" because of their strong emphasis on inner concentration and awareness. But more often, meditation is performed sitting still.
To begin to get an overview of the social impact of yoga, pilates and meditation, here are a few examples. There are currently an estimated 15 million people doing yoga in the US. Yoga is offered at virtually every YMCA, gym, and large company (and at many smaller ones, too.) Hospitals host yoga and meditation classes, colleges offer yoga for credit (I personally teach meditation to undergraduates at Springfield college.) Non–profits offer free yoga and meditation classes to their clients.
In major cities and wealthy communities, the "yoga spa" has emerged. Elegant and expensive, yoga spas offer classes, body and skin treatments, massage and more. Some Pilates studios housing tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and fixtures serve a dedicated clientele who pay between $50 and $200 up to several times a week for private sessions. At Insight meditation society in Barre Massachusetts, a center that offers silent meditation retreats, most scheduled retreats are filled to capacity, including the annual three–month retreat. Some courses are offered on lottery basis only. Looking at these as well as many other examples, I have concluded that yoga, pilates and meditation are now big business. When I began my study of yoga in New York City in 1983, things were very different. There was only a handful of places to take classes. The first yoga classes I took were in an ashram in the city. Close to two hours in length, each class featured chanting, synchronized breathing, deep relaxation, meditation and postures. The atmosphere was one of deep quiet self–contemplation. Instruction on the postures and body alignment was kept to a minimum; it was mostly following along with what others were doing.
Several things had to change before yoga would become the giant it is today. Enter two yoga teachers, Sharon Gannon and David Life. East Village musicans and performance artists, Sharon and David were young, glamorous, and extremely good at yoga. David owned the ultra–hip "life Café" located in the heart of the 1980's east village art boom. David and Sharon were (and still are) also very spiritual, idealistic, energetic and well–connected. They spend a lot of time in India, meditating with Saints and Gurus. Their physical posture practices are each jaw–droppingly advanced. Their yoga center, Jivamukti, might just be the most successful independent yoga center in the world.
While Jivamukti was just one of many forces driving the yoga boom, it has special meaning for me because I lived across the street from it and took classes there often. I saw actors, ballet dancers, and artists in class. It wasn't long after they opened the center before David and Sharon were showing up in major fashion and lifestyle magazines. At the same time, other young, glamorous, very talented yoga people were generating the same kind of buzz in California. There was a lot of information sharing and experimenting with postures. Teachers traveled the country offering workshops and teacher trainings. The quality of instruction on the postures improved across the board.
With celebrity endorsements, splashy magazine features, and more accessible instruction also came a proliferation of books about yoga and perhaps most importantly of all, the yoga video. By the early to mid 1990's, the concept of the "New Yoga" was popular. Removed from its ashram associations, with an emphasis on physical conditioning, "New Yoga" would appeal to large segments of the population. Centers and classes sprang up in all cities and many towns. Class times were shortened. Chanting and meditation were often left out of the mix. Music was added to many classes. "Flow" or "power" yoga, in which the practitioner moves, dance–like, from one challenging posture to the next, enchanted and inspired a whole new segment of the market.
Now in 2005 yoga has morphed again. I want to distinguish between fitness yoga and traditional yoga. In fitness yoga almost all of the class time is devoted to postures. Proper alignment may or may not be emphasised by the teacher. Yoga postures are presented in a manner consistent with current western ideas about fitness. I think that most yoga being offered now is fitness yoga. Due to the boom in the yoga market, most yoga teachers have a few years of experience, but some have only a few months. It is possible to get a yoga teacher certification in one weekend, and many fitness clubs arrange to have their staff take a weekend course in order to be able to offer yoga classes as part of club membership. (Though bear in mind there are some yoga teachers with extensive training who teach in fitness clubs.) Fitness yoga has delivered some positive outcomes. It has introduced yoga in many communities that would not otherwise have access to a teacher. It has raised awareness among the entire population of this country. It has pointed out the need for all yoga teachers to have at least a minimum of training in western anatomy and injury prevention.
Traditional yoga is much more difficult to master and less often taught. Learning is lifelong; but in general I think it takes at least five years serious study and practice to begin to understand it well enough to teach. The best teachers have decades of experience. Class time is divided between the internal practices—breath, deep relaxation, and self–reflection—and the active practice of postures.
Traditional yoga is concerned the cultivation and direction of life force energy. All the various practices of traditional yoga: breathing, postures, and mental practices are synergistically balanced to bring about the best result. Some elements may seem superficial or illogical—because the underlying model is, as I said before, Indian medicine and philosophy, which is very unfamiliar to us. Through time and experience, a traditional teacher learns the subtle arts of sequencing the postures, timing, and teaching vocabulary that will enable students to experience the full power of yoga. Great yoga teaching offers the student direct experience of the subtle life force in action. Through regular classes the student can discover her energy source, cultivate it and direct its flow. Mental and physical harmony are established, and inner peace blossoms.
Each individual comes to their first yoga class looking for something. Sometimes it's very clear–their doctor told them to do yoga. Perhaps they are having back pains, or they aren't sleeping well, or their blood pressure is up. All of these problems usually improve very quickly through taking yoga classes. Traditional yoga addresses the underlying cause of disease and imbalance at its root, generating health throughout the entire body mind system.
Now I would like to outline my criteria for "ultimate wellness". First of all, there is no one way to be well. My personal wellness path pulls together threads from many worlds, including exercise and fitness, medicine, psychology, religion and spirituality. The path to ultimate wellness is unique to each person–its up to each individual to put things together for herself.
In developing your personal wellness path, expect to experiment. It's trial and error. Something might work well for you for a while and then suddenly, seem not to fit any more. You will need to seek out opportunities to be well. Be prepared to be flexible. Here are some ideas you might find helpful when evaluating your own choices: In ultimate wellness, vital life energy is respected, understood, and experienced. Balancing energy inflow against outflow is the goal. Some activities that stimulate energy outflow are work, parenting, social events, errands and chores, eating unhealthy food, drinking alcohol or taking drugs, worry and anxiety, and usually, watching television. (Even highly pleasurable activities can cause energy outflow) Some examples of energy inflow activities are rest, relaxation, moderate exercise, eating healthy food, receiving massages, spending time in nature, looking at art, listening to music and meditating. Here is an a strategy for energy balance: you might have a ritual of walking every day, because you find that walking builds your energy. (In other words, it lifts your spirit, makes you feel good, and keeps you from feeling tired halfway through the day) But after a couple of months, let's say, you notice a pain in your hip. So you decide not to do your walking for awhile. If you take energy balance seriously, you don't leave it at that. You think, "What will I replace the walking with? Because if I take away the walking, there will be a deficit in my energy inflow. I need to establish another energy inflow in my life." So you might have to experiment with swimming or tai chi to maintain the balance of your energy. Most of my clients are women. I know that many women will spend 90–100% of their time on energy outflow. They skip class after class, because for instance, their 3–year old said "Mommy, don't go." Or because relatives were in town. Or because of work pressures. There is a universe of reasons not to stick with a class. Other women come to class no matter what. Most are somewhere in between. It's not that some women are simply more busy or important, and therefore can't make it to a class. We are all busy and important. There are always urgent demands arising in our sphere. Women who are experts at energy production and balance are very good at putting their own urgent need for wellness first, at least most of the time, knowing that in the end, they will be better able to be there for others as a result. By the way, I think guilt is a major roadblock on the Ultimate Wellness journey. When you take a stand for your own wellness, you might feel guilty, like you're being selfish or letting others down. However, if you tolerate the guilt feelings and practice self–care anyway, you'll tap into a huge amount of vital energy because your self–esteem will be so high.
Many women don't fully acknowledge the enormous power that guilt has over our destiny. In my experience, feeling guilty about taking care of ourselves first is the biggest roadblock stopping women from achieving wellness. We start out with good intentions, but then outside demands overwhelm us and old habits cause us to slip back into self–defeating behavior. Sometimes, we need support to confront the past conditioning that triggers guilt. Psychotherapy can be very helpful in this area, opening the door to lasting change.
Another feature of the new wellness is mindfulness of the body—that is the ability to be aware of one's own thoughts, feelings and body in a sustained way. There are formal meditation practices that teach this, but we can learn it in a traditional yoga class, or in any situation where we are being guided to ask ourselves, "How does this feel right now?"… "Where is my breath in my body right now?" …"What happens when I move this way?" Mindfulness is attending to ones' own experience in an open and non–judgmental way. When we do this, we make ourselves more safe in the world, because we are basing our actions on reality. So many of us spend all our lives thinking about things, analyzing everything. In yoga, this is called "ignorance," meaning we are living in a world of our own construction of thought upon thought, concept upon concept. Our view of the world bears slight resemblance to what is actually out there. When we are not in touch with what really is, we create a lot of suffering for ourselves. Mindfulness is a tool for generating wisdom. Using mindfulness we begin seeing what is right in front of us, taking the most effective courses of action, and moving beyond repetitive thought patterns that have defined our limitations in the past.
Another feature of the new wellness model is attention to connection. Rather than being separate human units, each in her own cocoon of thought, energy, and feelings—in reality we are totally enmeshed with our environment. We are more affected by outside factors than we like to admit. Air quality, sights, sounds, and all sense phenomena create ripples throughout the body and mind. To access your power of connection, cultivate relationships with people who make you feel good and limit your exposure to those who make you feel bad. Also, put yourself in environments that are pleasing to you—that are beautiful, comfortable, interesting or serene. You can strengthen your grounding connection to the earth, through walking, prayer, ritual, or outdoor activity. See your food in a new way– as the product of the sun, wind, earth and its creatures, and the many, many hours of human labor involved in growing, packaging, transporting, and preparation. Getting and eating food has been, and still, is a major preoccupation of all beings throughout the history of this earth. Eating can be a celebration of our connection with all of life. And finally, ultimate wellness includes movement. The body needs to move. Our bodies have been constructed to perform physical work. They are magnificently designed to perform millions of physical actions. When the body is denied its purpose, it becomes twisted, abused, forlorn. It takes the mind and spirit with it on its dark journey. We may think, for awhile, that disuse of the body has no bad consequences. We may not feel anything wrong, in fact we feel fine. We keep pushing our luck, going on with our daily concerns, but below the surface, damage is taking place. This is like leaving your car in the yard, without driving it, letting the leaves pile up on it. It won't be long before it won't even start any more. Hoses rot, the body rusts, the battery is long since dead, and fluids are leaking out. Squirrels nest under the hood and chew the electrical wiring. Sooner or later, you have to give up on the car. Yet there is no single day that you can point to and say "That's the day it went from being a car to just being junk." It happened gradually, by small degrees that were hardly noticeable. When it comes to your body, you can repair a lot of the damage caused by past disuse by getting on the wellness path. But the longer you wait, the more there is to make up for. Some damage can never be undone. Your body will be your home for the rest of your life, and your health will be a primary defining factor in your future happiness.
So regular, daily, physical movement of your whole body must be part of any wellness model. But not just any old movement will do. As ultimate wellness is all about having the very best quality of life you can have, attention must be paid to the qualities of our movement. It's important to seek out movement that feels good, gives you energy, makes you feel connected. The movement modality you choose should challenge your mind as well as your muscles, which is essential for keeping your brain function healthy and combating the effects of age.
The characteristics of ultimate wellness mirror those of traditional yoga. However, you can follow your path to ultimate wellness without ever taking a yoga class. You can fulfill your needs for energy balance, mindfulness, connection and movement through many different activities. What drew me to traditional yoga is that it's exceptionally good at fulfilling all of those needs, very effectively in a short space of time. Yoga is the technology that was developed in response to thousands of years of insight into how to avoid suffering and achieve the highest levels of happiness. When you come to a yoga class the first time, you might be surprised that everything is so simple. How can breathing a certain way, moving a certain way, concentrating a certain way—really deliver on a promise of joy, health, happiness and bliss? The answer is unknown—we don't know why it works, we only know that it does. After over 2 decades of personal experience, I've come to believe that, at least in part, yoga's appeal lies in its awesome effectiveness. And now, in 2005, many millions of people (mostly women!) all over the world are benefiting from thousands of years of yogic wisdom. It's an honor for me to be a yoga teacher, helping other women find greater happiness and ultimate well–being.