by Rolf Sovik
shavasana
Lie in shavasana and breathe deeply and smoothly. Bring your awareness to the following areas and rest briefly at each of them:• Crown of the head
• Forehead, sides and back of the head
• Ears, temples
• Eyebrows, eyelids, eyes
• Nose (rest and pause for a few breaths)
• Cheeks, jaw
• Mouth, lips, tongue
• Chin, throat
• Sides and back of the neck
• Pit of the throat, shoulders
• Upper, lower arms
• Hands, fingers, fingertips (rest and pause for a few breaths)
• Hands and arms
• Chest, sides, upper back
• Lungs, heart, heart center (rest and pause for a few breaths)
• Abdomen, sides, lower back
• Buttocks, lower abdomen, hips
• Hip joints, upper legs
• Lower legs, feet, toes (rest and pause for a few breaths)
After relaxing and breathing to the toes, travel back upward, moving awareness through the legs to the base of the spine. Slowly travel up along the spine, relaxing the deep muscles of the back, shoulders, and neck. Rest at the back of the head and then at the crown of the head. Breathe as if the whole body breathes. Let the feeling of breathing fill your mind as other thoughts come and go. Relax your mental effort.
Yoga teachers who have guided students in relaxation exercises similar to the one above are familiar with an unusual reaction that some students have to it. After being instructed to relax their fingers, they will wiggle them instead. Similar moving and wiggling happens up and down the body, from top to toe, as they follow the exercise.
The problem seems to be the same one I experienced with my bow arm: a loss of sensitivity. Distracted by mental chatter, holding much more tension in the body than is comfortable to acknowledge, and accustomed to doing something when asked to focus attention, many of us slip into activity mode without even recognizing it—we move.
Yoga offers a number of ways to calm this reaction. Asana practice challenges muscles and stretches them out. After an asana session it is much easier to rest during the relaxation. Tension/relaxation exercises help in identifying areas of the body to be relaxed. They also prepare individual muscles for relaxation. And finally, repetition of the basic relaxation method is often all it takes to restore sensitivity. Teachers can help establish a relaxation habit by making sure they guide students in a relaxation exercise at the end of every yoga class.
The habit of relaxation extends to sitting meditation. Often, reclining relaxation directly precedes meditation. Even when it doesn’t, the ability to quiet muscle tension and sit with minimal effort is essential to the meditation process. Once the body is relaxed and nervous system calmed, energy can be redirected to the concentration process rather than diffused by physical agitation and unconscious strain. Good relaxation skills naturally shift awareness inward and underlie the process of meditation at every turn.
Relaxing More Deeply
The unique function of muscles is to contract. To employ a muscle, we consciously or unconsciously send it a “contract” command. The muscle’s response depends upon the intensity of the message we send. If the input is substantial, muscle contractions are rapid and strong. With zero input, muscles become completely quiet. The trick to relaxing muscles, then, would seem to be to turn off the message machine for a time.
Should be easy, right? Unfortunately, the habit of tensing muscles can be deep-seated and instinctive. Nature has armored us with reflexes that resist relaxation and call for gentle handling. And while yoga postures do stretch muscles and reset reflexes to calmer levels, deep relaxation requires even more than this. To relax deeply, we need to address the multiple roots from which muscles and other body tissues receive their input.
Nerve fibers directed to muscles are the final pathways leading from a number of sources. A shrug of the shoulders, for example, may signal a conscious intention to communicate a message. But it may also express disgruntlement, the discomfort of being cold, or a feeling of low self-esteem. Tight shoulders, locked in an achy shrug, may result from too much caffeine, computer fatigue, or a poor sleeping posture. And the shoulder tension that arises from protecting an exposed neck is often a physical metaphor for insecurity of a different sort—for anxiety that has gone deeper into the psyche than we wish it had.
Because muscle contractions arise from so many sources, managing them invariably leads us deeper into ourselves. We begin by examining the body itself. In the course of relaxing, we develop a new relationship with our thoughts and emotional life. We gradually learn to understand how factors in our environment (often factors of our own choosing) are being reflected in the body. Over time, relaxation exercises teach us to work from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.
Establish a Practice
To relax, be regular and give the process its own time. It works well to conclude your asana sessions with a relaxation exercise, but on the days when you don’t have time for asanas, do a complete relaxation anyway. Relaxation is the means for slowing down, for learning how to respond to the technically challenging moments in your life with more balance.
With relaxation, the music sounds better.
Sleeping on the Run
There is a time for many words,
and there is also a time for sleep.
—Homer
There are times when the need for sleep is virtually overwhelming. You know the feeling—eyelids closing no matter how much energy you invest in propping them open . . . head teetering forward and back like a wobbly bowling ball . . . neck muscles turning to putty . . . body aching . . . and thoughts giving way to ghostly dreams.
Moments like this can be challenging, especially at work. All the symptoms of sleep deprivation batter your psyche at the same instant. Fighting to stay awake, you find an oldies rock station and hike up the volume. You shake your head from side to side, hoping to slosh your brain back to awareness. You slap your cheeks, shift your posture, and chew gum wildly.
Your determination somehow helps you get through your sleepiness, but you resolve never to let this happen again. You’ll organize your energies more carefully the next time, you say, as you wearily head home for a rest. Despite your resolve, however, there will be other moments equally as exhausting. Is there anything you can do?
A Serious Problem
Both yoga and ayurveda offer practical advice about managing sleepiness, but first it should be noted that daytime sleepiness may be more than a painful inconvenience. It has been associated with a number of medical conditions that severely interfere with the ability to concentrate and perform daily tasks and routines. These illnesses include narcolepsy, sleep apnea, periodic leg movements in sleep, restless legs syndrome, and circadian rhythm disorder. If you think that the consistency and duration of your sleepiness suggests a serious problem, consult a health-care professional who is capable of assessing your symptoms.
But even if your symptoms are not the result of a sleep disorder, daytime sleepiness can have serious consequences. A study by the National Sleep Foundation suggests that drowsy young adults (ages fifteen to twenty-four) are responsible for fifty thousand automobile accidents a year in the United States, with another fifty thousand accounted for by older drivers. Sleepiness also affects a wide range of behaviors, including the ability to memorize new material, maintain a positive and cheerful attitude, perform motor tasks without accidents, and get up promptly in the morning. It is believed that the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the Alaskan coast in 1989 happened, in part, because people in desperate need of sleep were in charge of the ship. So learning to manage sleep in the time allotted for it is a critical life skill.
Sleeplessness affects meditation as well. In a hall crowded with meditators it is not difficult to pick out those who are in need of sleep. With postures slumped and heads nodding they stand out just as clea
rly as those maintaining an erect posture. The fatigue of sleeplessness makes it extremely difficult to concentrate. And the painful effort to rouse the mind from sleep is agonizing in itself.
Sleepiness
Recent studies show that human beings pass through two distinct periods of sleepiness during the course of a day, periods that are linked to shifts in brain activity and behavior. The strongest urge for sleep occurs from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. Nighttime sleepiness is linked to natural changes in ambient light, and one of the ways that sleepiness is combated in the workplace during these times is to brighten the light.
A less powerful but still very significant urge for sleep occurs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., and napping in the afternoon is common in many cultures in the world. Not surprisingly, during these hours there is a rise in accidents and a fall in productivity as well. Usually, this time is followed by a period around dusk in which it is very unlikely to feel sleepy.
Swami Rama followed a routine that was closely tuned to the daily sleep cycle. He divided his sleeping schedule into two parts. At about 2 p.m., following lunch, he would sleep for one hour. Then, during the middle of the night, he would sleep for another two hours. That was the extent of his sleeping. He rarely wavered from this extraordinary schedule in the nearly three decades he spent working in the West.
But for most of us, a good sleep schedule will look very different. Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga, links the optimum sleep schedule to cycles in the day. According to this discipline, each day is divided into segments that correspond to the three doshas (the three bodily humors). During each segment, a particular dosha is predominant:
An important clue to reducing daytime sleepiness is found in the ayurvedic dictum that sleep can be enhanced by getting to bed earlier rather than later. If you go to bed around 10 p.m., nature assists you in the process of bedding down for the night. As evening progresses and the kaphic dosha prevails, energy levels quiet down and the mind is naturally led toward rest.
Getting to sleep earlier in the evening nourishes us and helps us gather energy, but if the mind remains awake much past 10 p.m., it becomes increasingly active again, influenced by pittic energies. By midnight, both mind and body are hungry for action. That’s why ayurvedic practitioners often suggest that an early bedtime is best for restoring energy. It also makes waking in the morning easier.
If you are a person who remains active late into the night, however, it can be very difficult to accustom yourself to an early bedtime. Try making the change gradually. Shave off fifteen to thirty minutes from your bedtime until you bring it into the 10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. range. Then, after four or five days of getting to bed at this time, notice any improvements in your daytime energy levels. If you have experienced considerable daytime sleepiness, this technique can be just the ticket. By shifting the sleep cycle to an earlier interval, you take advantage of life’s normal rhythms to enhance your slumber and improve your daytime energy.
Sleeping on the Run
There are times in everyone’s life when exhaustion carries the day. The need for sleep becomes virtually overwhelming and to resist it is futile. At such times a technique associated with yoga nidra, yogic sleep, can refresh the mind in a surprisingly short period of time. For one who meditates regularly, this practice is relatively easy to learn, but it can be mastered by anyone with patient effort.
The purpose of this technique is to put both body and mind into a profound state of rest while remaining alert at a deeper level of consciousness. There is no special mantra to recite; no breathing exercise other than relaxed breathing to practice; and no advanced asana to master. In fact, to all external appearances, the practice looks very much like napping.
The difference between napping and yogic sleep, however, lies in what is happening deep within. In yogic sleep, attention is drawn to the heart center, and there you will become a quiet witness to the sleeping body and mind. At the outset of practice you must determine how long you will sleep—perhaps ten minutes.
Your mind will then wake you when the time has elapsed. You will fully rest, unconcerned by any disturbing thought.
Getting Ready
Begin by sitting on the floor, resting your back against a wall. Stretch your legs straight out in front of you and cross one ankle over the other. Cup your palms in your lap, relaxing your arms. Lower your head toward your lap and relax your neck (for those with neck strain, however, rest your head against the wall). Close your eyes.
resting against a wall
The Technique
Begin by relaxing your body and settling a bit deeper into the posture. Your head hangs comfortably from the neck, and there should be no tension or resistance in the neck itself. As you sit, your body will become still.
Next, bring your awareness to your breath. The sides of the abdomen as well as the front of the abdominal wall will expand and contract with each breath. Feel each exhalation cleanse the body and each inhalation refresh it. Deepen the breath and let it flow easily and smoothly.
Bring your awareness to the nostrils. Rest there, feeling the flow of the breath for a few breaths. Now move your awareness to the eyebrow center. Center your attention there as you feel the gentle movement of the breath—as if you are breathing at that point. Then shift your awareness to the throat center. Again feel the breath. Finally, lower your awareness to the heart center, deep in the center of the chest, and once more focus on the breath. This is where your awareness will remain for the rest of the exercise.
After resting at the heart center for a few breaths, make a quiet resolve. Resolve that you will sleep for a specified length of time. Announce the time to yourself before you fall asleep, so that your mind will awaken you when the time has elapsed. Then let your body and mind go to sleep.
You will remain watching, using the merest awareness of the flow of the breath as an anchor for your consciousness, but otherwise attending to nothing. You are not concerned with any sensations or thoughts that might arise in the early stages of the practice. Your body may jerk, your mind may drift off in one direction or another, but you are not interested in these experiences. They simply alert you to the fact that you are falling asleep. After a few minutes, your mind and body will approach sleep. Continue observing yourself, feeling your breath ebb and flow at a deep level of your awareness.
Stay in this state until your mind wakes you up. When you awaken, slowly raise your head and stretch your body. Draw your attention outward, opening your eyes into your hands and then to the room around you.
This technique should be practiced in a place where you will not be disturbed suddenly. Close the door to the room you are in, and if necessary, ask a friend to help you maintain the quiet environment you will need to practice successfully. You will find that this practice is much more effective than napping, though it takes less time. It will help you restore energy and regain your power of concentration.
So, the bottom line in managing exhaustion is to give up the fight. Rather than struggling against the urge to sleep—get some. Quietly and efficiently refresh your body and mind.
Balancing Your Energies
A mortal lives not through that breath
that flows in and that flows out.
The source of his life is another
and this causes the breath to flow.
—Paracelsus
Cycling continuously through day and night, the breath empties the lungs and fills them with air. In due course, each breath rids the body of wastes, replenishes the bloodstream with oxygen, and nurtures the cellular fires of metabolism. Durable and able to accommodate an enormous range of circumstances, breathing forms a backdrop for every activity.
But exhalation and inhalation, the two great tides of the breath, do not give us a complete picture of breathing. Exhalations and inhalations are connected to a vast inner system of energy, a latticework of activities all woven around a central hub. Contained in that system are mechanisms that process and put energy to use. Thus, without conscious effo
rt, we are able to maintain the temperature of the body, circulate blood to each of its cells, digest the food we have eaten, and prepare the wastes accumulating inside us for elimination. This mobilization of the entire array of human functions—functions propelled by a living, vital energy—is what we really mean when we say that breathing sustains life. Under the influence of this inner breath, the body/mind comes alive.
According to the yoga tradition, this far-reaching system of vital energy functions through five sub-energies, called variously the five pranas, the five vayus, or the five prana-vayus (the term vayu means “wind, breath, or life force”). Each function has a distinct role, and each is integrated into the total system of human energy. If we understand the role of each prana-vayu, we can grasp how the forces of prana serve the whole person, and we can see how disturbances among the pranas reduce our quality of life and lead to illness. Then we can employ one of the yoga relaxation methods to turn around the downward spiral of energy. First, let’s take a look at each of the five prana-vayus.
