Benefits of Stretching the Skeletal System through all five Koshas

Annamayakosha (Physical Body)
- Stretching helps us expand the muscles and get out of our contracted states. When muscles are constantly contracted because of stress (physical, mental/emotional), the arteries to the bones are compressed, resulting in reduced nutrient flow or starvation. This process reduces the ability of the bones to produce new blood cells.
- Stretching increases flexibility. Flexibility increases the range of motion of the joint it crosses
- Separation is seen in the lack of awareness of the physical body: posture, alignment and damaging activities at work and play
- Stretching is just as important as exercise. Stretching is a good warm up to more aggressive forms of exercise. Longer holds move out of the muscle and work into the fascia. Exercising too hard before the body is warmed up, lifting too heavy weights, fast and jerky movements, and not cooling down properly can injure the fascia,
- Proper nutrition is also important for flexibility. Health, resilience and elasticity of connective tissue is effected by nutrition, When we are stressed we secrete cortisol. Cortisol damages connective tissue

Pranamayakosha (Energy Body)
- Lack of consistent stretching and limited mobility in the physical body can lead to stiffness and pain.  Misused joints can become frozen and immovable physically and energetically.  The breath also can be diminished as a result of immobility.
- Body and outside temperature can effect flexibility and mobility.  Warming up will help flexibility and help prevent injury in yoga and other activities.
- Age and weight can diminish energy.  We should chose age appropriate physical activities and be mindful of our energy level at the present moment not what we did yesterday,
- Conscious breathing can add in flexibility.  It is important to breath consciously when stretching.
- Warming down is as important as warming up.
- Lengthening and stretching the spinal column allows for proper functioning of sushumna, ida and pingala nadis
- Stretching and lengthening the spine opens the chakras,

Manomayakosha (Psycho-Emotional Body)
- The stress hormone cortisol is detrimental to bone growth and health which may lead to poor mobility and inflexibility.
- Chronic stress can lead to hypercorisolism which contributes to osteoarthritis and inflexibility.
- People with flexibility issues may feel anger, emotional restriction and stress.  Pain may lead to negative emotions.  Negative emotions may lead to inflexibility and pain.
- Mental attitudes of those around you can effect our flexibility.
- Connective tissue is effected by out emotions and causes stagnation and armoring
- Trauma can be stored in the body as armoring or inflexibility
- A relaxed state can aid in flexibility.
- Stretching should be done slowly with as much relaxation as possible.
- Consistency in stretching can help in flexibility

Vijnamayakosha (Witness Body)
- Stretching should be done slowly without expectation of quick results.
- The stretch should be held for time to cause the muscles to be accustomed to the new length.
- Stretching the skeletal system activates the both physiological and energetic sensations. As we get more familiar with our skeletal system through stretching we learn to approach the body as it is now and not as it was or we would like it to be.  We experience the present moment as we are right here right now. We cultivate the witness
- We also learn to balance between what we want and where we are.

Anandamayakosha (Bliss Body)
- We are not this body we are not this mind.
- Stretching the skeletal systems removes the blocks that are keeping us from our true nature
- Stretching is a way to expand ourselves and remember that we are the universe and the universe is us.

BHAJO RAADHE KRISHNA
BHAJO RAADHE SHYAAMA (2X)
OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM (2X)
SOHAM, SOHAM, SOHAM SlVOHAM (2x)
I AM THAT I AM, I AM THAT I AM (2X)
I AM NEITHER BODY NOR MIND IMMORTAL SELF I AM (2X)
I AM NOT THIS BODY, THIS BODY IS NOT MINE
I AM NOT THIS MIND, THIS MIND IS NOT MINE
OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM OM (2X)
I AM NOT THIS PRAANA, THIS PRAANA IS NOT MINE
I AM NOT THESE SENSES, THESE SENSES ARE NOT MINE
I AM NOT THIS INTELLECT, THIS INTELLECT IS NOT MINE
I AM NOT THESE EMOTIONS THESE EMOTIONS ARE NOT MINE
I AM THAT I AM, I AM THAT I AM I AM THAT I AM, I AM THAT I AM
I AM WITNESS OF THREE STATES EXISTENCE ABSOLUTE
I AM WITNESS OF THREE STATES KNOWLEDGE ABSOLUTE
I AM WITNESS OF THREE STATES, BLISS ABSOLUTE I AM WITNESS OF THREE STATES, BLISS ABSOLUTE
I AM SATCHIDAANANDA, I AM SATCHIDAANANDA EXISTENCE, KNOWLEDGE, BLISS ABSOLUTE
I AM MIND OF ALL MINDS PRAANA OF ALL PRAANAS
I AM SOUL OF ALL SOULS, SELF OF ALL SELVES
SOHAM, SOHAM, SOHAM SIVOHAM (2X)
BHAJO RAADHE KRISHNA
BHAJO RAADHE SHYAAMA (2X)

Discover Your Inner Strengths

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
Lao Tzu

I often hear yoga teachers say when the class is supposed to hold a difficult pose; “don’t give up, you can do it,  you are a lot stronger than you think.”  I wonder to myself as I continue to hold the pose: are they sure, I don’t want to hurt myself, how do they know, I am tired . . .

What these teachers are talking about is our inner strength. Inner strength is the strong personal belief that you CAN accomplish a task or master a situation.  It is  expressed through will power, positive attitude, belief, and confidence in yourself. A healthy amount of Inner strength makes us feel good about ourselves, capable and courageous.The key to inner strength is the phrase “I can.”  When we start to stumble into the area of I can’t we let go of or ignore our inner strength.  There is a wonderful quote by Henry Ford that is often repeated so please forgive me as I repeat it again:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”

Before I was born, my mother showed an incredible amount of inner strength when she decided to get her master’s degree as a single mom recently divorced.  She went up to New York City from Philadelphia for three days a week for two years to study at NYU while my aunt took care of my sister. My mom shared an apartment and went to classes in a different city in order to get the degree she felt was necessary to provide the life she wanted for herself and her daughter.  She didn’t say I can’t go because I am a mom, or recently divorced, or live in Philadelphia, or don’t have any money.  Mom said I can and she did. She also had the support systems that made this possible: a wonderful and dedicated sister.

My mother successfully got her master’s degree from NYU and became a much respected professor of nursing at Temple University where she developed many programs.  She got married for the second time, this time to my father and had two more kids:  my brother and me.

My mother’s story is one of many stories about people tapping into their inner strength, believing in themselves and doing what they think is necessary to make their lives better.

One way to tap into your own inner strength is to be positive.  This may be easy to say but difficult to do.  Start by listening to your language.  Is it positive? Do you give up too easily? Do you put yourself down?  How do you talk about others?  Are you positive?  If you find your words are negative and harsh start to shift them.  If this seems impossible, take baby steps and do this gradually. Remember, don’t beat yourself up if  you stumble and get off the path, just brush yourself off and start all over again.  Remember, we all have incredible inner strength. Our inner strength is already present within us.  It’s there just waiting for us to tap into it. We must believe, learn to say I can and stay positive.

Excavation 1:

Journal about time in your life that you showed a great amount of inner strength.

 Excavation Question 2:

Journal about a person you admire that shows great inner strength.

Discover Your Limitations

“I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.” 
~ Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

All Artwork is by Kathe Kollwitz

Since I came back from Europe this summer, my body has been very different. I attribute the change  to the nine days I spent sick in bed with a bladder infection that I thought was heat exhaustion. During my illness, I went from being freezing cold with uncontrollable chills to being excruciatingly hot with fever and sweats so intense that my sheets would be soaked.  In a strange bed in an unfamiliar country, I felt alone, helpless, exhausted and scared.

Now back in Los Angeles, in my yoga practice I am less flexible and not as strong. My ego is distressed because it wants to always improve, go forward.  But my body is not willing.  Many yoga poses that came easy to me before my trip I can no longer perform.

Holding standing postures like warrior two is not something I can not do in the same way as I did before. My balance is off in tree pose and warrior three.  I am weak in plank and sun salutations.

I have lost a lot of flexibility in my hamstrings and hips. I realize I have to start again building my strength, flexibility and balance. I have to accept where I am now, not where I was or where I think I should be. This is humbling. This is frustrating. I took so much pleasure my progress and now I am not there anymore.

In my frustration, I keep coming back to why I began yoga: to heal pain, to de-stress, to feel relaxed, to be healthy. . .  All those things are still there.  I just have to honor my body and my limitations and be in the present moment: not the past - how I use to do the pose, or the future: how I want to do the pose, but where my body is right now.  I need to find out where my limitations are and honor the edge, and remember that everyday and every moment our limitations change.

Excavation Question for Discovering your Limitation:

Explore through Journaling, Art or music what are your limitations.  You can also explore why you meditate and/or practice yoga.

Discover Your Boundaries

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others. – Brene Brown

Ansel Adams

Once in a intuitive reading I was told that I was Personality Type Number 9.

 Type 9 is called the Peacemaker but what was more interesting to me was that number 9s meld  very easily. 9s have a rather diffuse sense of their own identities. They often merge with their loved ones and through a process of identification take on the characteristics of those closest to them. Or in simple speech, we don’t have good boundaries.

What exactly is boundary?  One definition is a boundary is a limit or space between you another person; a clear place where you begin and the other person ends.  It is like a wall around a castle with one entry and you are the gatekeeper.  As the gatekeeper, you decide who you let in and who goes out.

Ansel Adams

We need to set boundaries in order to protect ourselves. Creating healthy boundaries does not always come naturally. As children, boundaries were put on us and we watched and learned as other people in our lives created boundaries. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you may have not learned about setting healthy boundaries.

Ansel Adams

Learning to set our own healthy boundaries means getting to know ourselves, deciding what and who is important, who and what we want in our lives, and acting on these decisions. It may mean letting go of the unhealthy people in our lives so that we can grow into the healthy person that we want to become.

Ansel Adams

The decision to set healthy boundaries can be seen as an empowerment exercise in the journey towards self-realization.   When we create boundaries, we are taking a stand for ourselves, and declaring we are worthy of all the good things life has to offer.

Ansel Adams

Excavation Questions for Setting Boundaries: 
Write five boundaries for yourself. Begin with five of your most painful behaviors. You can always add more later.

Ansel Adams

Discover Your Identity

“Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.”
― Doug Cooper, Outside In

Van Gogh - Self Portrait

We all have beliefs about who we are and what we can do.  But as humans we also have enormous capabilities and capacities beyond what we think is possible.  Growing up in the 80s one of my favorite TV shows was the Incredible Hulk.  In this show Dr. Banner was consumed by the idea that we can tap into a superhuman strength when we need it. He was also extremely distressed that he could not tap in this strength when it was needed to save his wife.  He creates the Hulk in an experiment to understand this primal super human strength. The Hulk becomes a curse for him and it was the product of an accident during his experimentation.

Incredible Hulk TV show of my youth

The power to tap into our tremendous potential comes from our identity.  Our identity is where we ask the questions: how do we define ourselves and what do we believe we can achieve? Often we have all kinds of ideas about what we can’t do and why we can’t do it and they are simply not true.  When I practice yoga, sometimes I come up with elaborate stories about why I can’t do a pose: my thighs are too big, my arms are too short, etc. And then months or years later, I may get to that expression of the pose (that I had previously deemed impossible) and I realize my story just wasn’t true; it was in fact just a story.

Self Portrait - Artemisia Gentilischi

Identity is the most powerful aspect of the human personality. Once we define our identity we are determined to remain consistent with our definition no matter how limiting the definition may be. If we want to transform ourselves we have to be ready and willing to expand our identity.  We can expand our identities by building new, empowering sets of beliefs, letting go of our stories and being open to all possibilities.  A great way to do this is by doing yoga, meditation, reading, journaling and exposing ourselves to new ideas and experiences.

Self Portrait - Artemisia Gentilischi

The Key Principles of Identity
1.  Identity determines our actions. We act according to our views of who we are—sometimes these views are accurate and sometimes they are not.

2. Once we know who we are, we must try to accept ourselves. If we attempt to live our lives in a way that’s inconsistent with who we are we will live from a place of frustration, stress and disappointment. We need to embrace our  needs, desires, strengths, fears, values and beliefs in order to tap into our tremendous potential.
3. Don’t maintain the illusion that a single behavior decides who they really are.
Sometimes we experience moments of anger, anxiety and/or defeat, and that result in saying or doing things that are inconsistent with who we are.  These Inconsistent behaviors are not parts of our overall identity but instead momentary lapses. We should investigate these behaviors, forgive ourselves and move on.
4. When you take responsibility, you restore your identity. When we create unfavorable or hostile situations, we should take action to repair any harm that we may have caused and again forgive ourselves and move on.
5. Expand your identity by doing something that is out of character.
We grow when we try things we might find strange or out of the ordinary. It is the because  these activities are uncomfortable to us that we have the possibility to learn more about ourselves.  It is by doing these new things that we can expand our identity and grow.
6. Our personal identities are always evolving. We have the power to reinvent ourselves at any moment. We can create new, empowered, expansive identities that are consistent with our beliefs and desires if we want to.

Frida Kahlo - Self Portrait

EXCAVATION QUESTIONS
Write of list of your likes and dislikes.  Write a list of things that are “out of character” that you might consider doing to shake yourself up a little and help to expand your identity.

Cindy Sherman - Self Portrait