Mostly yoga
You know those classes that happen sometimes when you emerge feeling like a lighter, brighter, fizzier version of the person you were when you went in?
Or the ones where a week’s worth of stress slides mercifully off your shoulders somewhere during down-dog?
This post is not about them.
Continue reading When you’re not enjoying your practice…
Many of has have heard the term neuroplasticity and associate it with the brains ability to re-purpose areas of the brain to compensate for injury.
Recently, I’ve been fascinated by neuroplasticity, and in particular “The brain that changes itself” by Norman Doidge.
The truth is that the scope of neuroplasticity is much greater than compensating for injury. It is not just limited to just the brain and it is not always a miraculous force for recovery.
One thing that yoga has taught me is that the body adapts to how you use it; I realise this isn’t rocket-science, it’s the underlying principle of all training.
If you want to be good at football, you do football-related activities; if you want to be a good guitarist, you play the guitar.
Neuroplasticity is at the core of all training.
The catch is this, neuroplasticity is an indiscriminate ability; it does not make judgements on the merit of the skill it is optimising for, or the way it is compensating for an injury. It simply re-programs and helps you adapt; sometimes the outcome is not ideal.
One of the most unfortunate results of neural re-programming “gone wrong” is chronic pain. This has been referred to as the “dark-side” of neuroplasticity. In many instances of chronic pain, the cause is a reprogramming of the nervous system to recognise many nerve signals as pain.
Another related outcome, covered in Doidge’s book is “learned non-use”.
Put simply, when we sustain an injury we re-program to get by without.
Controversial studies by a neuroscientist called Edward Taub demonstrated that forcing a patient to try and use a nerve-injured limb brought about a better recovery than allowing them to learn to cope with one limb. Effectively he forced the neuroplastic recovery process to take the “harder” compensation path and achieved much better results.
So where does aging fit into all of this?
I don’t believe neuroplasticity will give us younger-looking skin or glossy hair (just hair might be nice).
I do wonder how much of the limited mobility and muscle atrophy we accept as part of aging is learned non-use on a smaller-scale. As we compensate over and over again for life’s thousands of small injuries do we just stop using our bodies to their full extent?
Is it possible that at least some of the stuff we call age-related is learned behaviour?
If so, then the news is good because neuroplastic-change is on-going and may be un-learned.
Which finally brings me to yoga.
I am never going to declare yoga as the fountain of youth, but common-sense clearly shows that repeatedly moving your neuroplastic body and nervous system through its full range of movement is likely to preserve and probably extend that range of movement.
I say it again.
The body adapts to how you use it.
…so get on the mat!
What do The Tibetan Book of the Dead and a relationship break-up have in common?
The Tibetan Book of the dead or the Bardo Thodol is a Buddhist text that is read to the dead as a means of instruction. It explains to the departed how to navigate the challenges of the period between death and rebirth. This period is called a bardo.
Bardo actually means intermediate state and can be used in a more general way. Meditation is a bardo, dreaming is a bardo. Even the pause between inhaling and exhaling can be regarded as a bardo.
It is a moment where a state of being stops momentarily. It is frequently an opportunity for reflection before moving on or resuming.
The period of solitude after a relationship ends is a bardo, and intentionally or otherwise, the Bardo Thodol has more than a little relevance.
The heavily abridged version of the Bardo Thodol goes like this.
After you die you meet five Buddhas. Conveniently each is a different colour. However, there is a catch… they’re beautiful and powerful to the point of terrifying.
At the same time you will see a smoky realm, the same colour as the Buddha, but duller. In each instance you will feel more drawn to the smoky realm than the Buddha. It will feel safer, easier to go towards than face the awesomeness of the Buddha.
Spoiler alert… don’t go to the smoky realm, doing so sends you back to the wheel of birth and death. Got it? Yeah well don’t be so self-assured. The fact that you’re here, incarnated reading this means you clearly cocked it up last time.
When a relationship ends you don’t get pestered by scary Buddhas, you get pestered by doubts.
How you handle these doubts will affect the state of being that follows the break-up. You don’t have to be a Buddhist to see that a fearful response is going to send you back into a similar relationship, to stumble over the same ground again. Most commonly fear is going to manifest as questions like “will I find someone?”, or “am I lovable?” This in turn makes you inclined to accept the first passable option that comes along, or go back to where you were on the same terms.
Conversely a courageous response will mean a different path; perhaps looking further afield, outside your comfort zone. If you can’t find the relationship you want within familiar experience maybe it’s time to try something new, meet a new type of person.
The ultimate twist in the Book of the Dead is this…
The Buddhas aren’t real, they are your own creations.
They are you.
They are you in all your powerful, beautiful, terrifying glory.
When you reject the Buddhas for the safer smokey path you reject the highest version of yourself for a lesser option.
As Stephen Chbosky wrote, “we accept the love we think we deserve”.
So, if you are between relationships consider; what would your next relationship look like if you spent your time in the bardo between relationships skilfully? If you dismissed fearful thoughts and accepted the best version of you?
I like getting-up early in the morning, with a bag packed the night before.
These two activities in combination signal adventure. I’m sure this dates back to childhood, when family holidays were always preceded by a night of packing and a pre-dawn rise.
Today the adventure is different.
Geographically, the destination is Bondi Junction; about 45 minutes on the train.
This trip is the second instalment in a greater journey. I’m training as a Yoga Teacher.
The first instalment was two weeks ago; a week spent with twenty amazing co-aspirants.
We ate well, practiced yoga for hours, danced, laughed and even cried.
We came together as a team in a way that I have never experienced before; and as a guy with a thirty year career in corporate IT, I’ve done more than my share of team building.
In yoga the word Namaste is frequently translated as “the light in me recognises the light in you”. That’s exactly what happened.
For one week we created a space where it was safe to be yourself, in all your glory, with all your doubt, your fear and your dreams.
No matter what you brought with you, you were greeted with non-judgment and support.
It was like being adopted by a huge family, completely devoid of bickering, sibling rivalry or any negativity.
And uniting us all, a common desire to enhance the yoga in our lives. For some the goal is to become a teacher, for others, it’s to deepen their own practice. Many of us are uncertain how we will use the training, it’s simply a path we were compelled to take, the destination is yet to be revealed.