Archive for April, 2010

Arm balancing postures and positions such as the Cataranga Dandasana (the push-up) can be very exhilarating. They can energise you by increasing your circulation and they are also good at developing chest, arm and core strength. When done correctly they can really help relieve and prevent back and neck pain and can give direct stimulation to the heart and lungs.

Click on the following thumbnails to open and enlarge the full photographs of Bianca Machliss (Director, Yoga Synergy) demonstrating some arm-balancing postures. (All photos by Alejandro Rolandi)

Often women have trouble doing these arm balancing postures because of relatively smaller chest and arms and larger hips relative to men. Often men can only do these poses out of brute force, but when you understand and adopt the following tips strength is not as much of an issue and more people especially women can begin to enjoy and benefit from arm balancing postures.

Simple Tips to help to Arm Balancing Postures and Push-up positions:

• (note that every position that takes weight on the arms has specific details that may not be mentioned here)
• have the palms flat on the floor but grip with your finger tips
• press more on the inside (thumb-side) of the palms for better force transfer from the forearms to the wrists
• squeeze the heel of the palm inwards (as if trying to turn the palm out) in order to stabilise the elbow
• tighten the underarm muscles by pressing the arm pits in the direction they are pointing
• generally bring the shoulders over the over the finger tips (for most arm balances)
• spread the shoulder blades and lengthen the skin between the shoulder blades in the upper back
• push the sitting bones and lower trunk toward the same direction the navel is pointing until the front of the abdomen becomes firm without sucking the navel to the spine
• breathe into the firm abdomen to give you relaxed inner power that can be maintained for a long time without stress
• don’t do anything that feels painful or is potentially dangerous for you

Our last few posts have been a little on the serious side so this one is a little more light-hearted…

This is classic australian yoga of the 1980′s – well sort of – there is a series of handstands and a spinning headstand and Humphrey B Bear doing hanumanasana (the splits). But best of all is the classic Humphrey B Bear chant which i was really keen to find to show my kids. I am very sentimental really – this song gets me right in the knee-cap. No really!

I have just posted a link on twitter and facebook on an excellent article and video from the mercola.com website about about …

Corrupted Infant Vaccines that Contains Pig Virus: http://bit.ly/9WBgVK … and the danger behind just what is going inside many vaccinations.

I would never tell a parent not to immunise their child. That is a personal decision every parent must make. However, I strongly suggest everyone should carefully examine the safety of what you are putting into your child’s body, or your own body or your pet’s body for that matter. I spent years working in research science as a genetic engineer, and to me the rationale for giving most vaccinations the way they are given just does not make sense. In this excellent video and article by Dr Mercola we find that the american government has just withdrawn three commonly used infant vaccines because they realised that they contain potential cancer causing animal viral DNA. Pretty shocking stuff actually.

Irrespective of whether you choose to vaccinate or not it is obviously important to address the health of your immune system. Two of the best ways to do this are (1) through yoga and exercise and (2) through what you eat. Most people dont realise that these two things are intimately related. How you practice yoga, exercise and especially how you breathe directly affects your choice of food.

Yoga has postures and breath-control (pranayama) exercises that stimulate the immune system. One such posture is Simhasana (see photos), which directly stimulates the spleen meridian. In the two photos shown of Simhasana you see me doing Tha-Uddiyana Bandha on exhalation retention. This bandha stimulates both the spleen and the thymus gland which are both important organs of the immune system. In the second Simhasana photo I am doing Tha-Uddiyana Bandha on exhalation retention retention with Tha-Mula Bandha (AKA nauli). This is a very powerful combination that acts in many ways on the immune system. These exercises are also powerful on the immune system because with regular practice they cause an overall increase in carbon dioxide which leads to an increase in circulation as well as an increase in the relaxation response (the parasympathetic nervous system).

The ability to relax the abdomen and especially the sides of the abdomen reflects a regular practice of abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing directly stimulate the immune system. One of the best places to learn diaphragmatic breathing is any of the variations of mayurasana (as shown in the third photo). In the mayurasana you see me doing I have maintained a very soft abdomen yet that is exactly where I am breathing from. The pressure from my elbows and my diaphragm on inhalation directly stimulates the internal body systems, especially the immune system, the digestive system and the reproductive system.

You don’t need to learn difficult postures to get this effect. A similar effect that can be just as positive on the immune system by doing a brisk but relaxed one hour walk every day, but the trick is you have to move your hips and shoulders freely with the spine and you must breathe into your abdomen. In this situation the spine massages the internal organs and the abdominal breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and gives reflex relaxation of the muscles around the lower trunk thus freeing up the spine. As excess trunk muscle tension is relieved with diaphragmatic breathing and the circulation of blood can also increase significantly without breath rate or even heart rate increasing.

When minimal and diaphragmatic breathing is combined with postures that physically put pressure on the organs and/or acupuncture meridians related to the immune system and the digestive system, then the combination not only enhances immune system function but also increases your digestive function. Hence food becomes more easily assimilated, and elimination of waste is more effective. Therefore you can eat less because food will satisfy you more easily.

The effect of learning how to breathe less than normal (hypoventilation) creates a mild internal acidity that makes one tend to choose food that is more alkalising in the blood. Alkalising foods include most fruit vegetables and salad, namely all the foods that have been shown to positively affect the health of the immune system.

Hence, how you practice yoga does not simply affect the health of your internal organs but actually changes your desire for food. As you get more comfortable creating a mild respiratory acidity by breathing less air per minute (the ultimate aim of pranayama), you begin to tend to choose healthier more alkaline food, and not crave less healthy acidic foods which are often processed and can negatively affect the immune system and your health in general.

An parent thinking not to immunise their child or not depend on vaccinations or conventional medicines for their own health needs to address the health of their own immune systems by correct yoga, exercise, breathing and diet. Our food choices as parents directly influences what our children choose too.

You can read more about this subject in the Yoga Synergy book or online course on the ‘Applied anatomy and physiology of yoga’ or our DVD entitled ‘Nutrition, Diet and the Art and Science of Learning how to Eat Less to Live Longer’

This is very inspirational video where you can see my dear friend and colleague William Trubridge break the world record in Unassisted Freediving with a dive to 88m (288ft) in 3 minutes 30 seconds. The dive was set at the Vertical Blue Invitational Freediving Competition in Dean’s Blue Hole, Long Island, Bahamas.

I have been priviledged to teach yoga on two of Williams advanced free diving courses. William is an exemplary yogi. His pranayama is immaculate. He can comfortably hold his breath in for 7 to 8 minutes or more and can hold his breath out for for about 4 minutes doing uddiyana bandha. In this video before he goes underwater you can see him breathing into his mouth to ‘pack’ extra air into his lungs under pressure. This so called ‘packing’ process is related to the hatha yoga pranayama technique referred to as plavini, one of  the ‘mystical’ nine main pranayamas, which is only loosely described in the texts and is often said to be when  you swallow air into the stomach and float on water. This description of plavini is however quite non-sensical and what William and many free-divers practice is the technique of swallowing extra air into the lungs but actually pushing the air into the lungs under positive mouth pressure. William says he can fill a few extra litres of air into his lungs in this manner which obviously allow you to hold your breath longer. When you use this technique on land you actually feel very full of air which can be uncomfortable and possible dangerous if attempted by inexperienced practitioners, but once you go even a few metres under the water the increased pressure of the water reduces the pressure in the lungs and allows you to feel quite comfortable.

This novel technique for breathing is also described in the  scientific literature as glossopharyngeal breathing (GPB). It relies on the glosso-pharyngeal muscles instead of the respiratory muscles to move air into the lungs (glossopharyngeal insufflation, GI) and out of them (glossopharyngeal exsufflation). In In this scientific article (Lemaître et al, 2009) you can read more about the science of this technique and how it has been used with positive effects by free divers as well as by people with poliomyelitis and cervical spinal cord injury.

It is also very interesting to see how smoothly William swims, dropping with gravity on the way down once he gets past a certain depth and using arms and legs with very smooth action to return to the surface. This certainly yoga in terms of it being art and science of being doing a very stressful activity in a very relaxed and focused manner.

For more information visit http://www.verticalblue.net

This is a video lecture on the essence of yoga and its related anatomy and physiology of yoga, a demonstration of some advanced yoga and a short beginner level class i gave to about 500 people at Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney at the start of 2010. Thanks to Sheona White for organising this and Ross Glendenning and Verity Gill for there assistance in demonstration.

In addition to the physical yoga demonstration and the lecture I demonstrate here strength using internal relaxation power from diaphram, a relaxed abdomen and a relaxed neck. I also demontrate breath-control that can slow the heart rate from 88 to 33 beats per minutes in about 45 seconds. Thank you  to 3 of my main teachers who taught me the essence of this work. Prof Bhim Dev, Natanaga Zhander (Shandor Remete) and Zhen Hua Yang

Please click here to see the video.