Tag Archive for: Axis

Testing Ayurveda’s Applications: Findings

My journey started the night before the official “start” of the experiment when I went to the store to find some things to tide me over, so to speak. I worked to plan my breakfast and lunch menus since those are the occasions where I do most of the dairy and wheat consumption. Little did I know as I looked at ingredients labels how much wheat and dairy had infiltrated the World?

Early impressions of the dietary changes are that I have quickly developed an unsteady feeling in my body affecting my equilibrium including a few tremors in my legs. As to the media avoidance, I could not be happier after hearing about the death of OBL the night before I started my media fast, that I had a built in excuse not to be privy to the endless babble that would ensue for at least two weeks.

Four days in and I’m thinking that I might be dealing with some Hypoglycemia regarding the unsteady feeling I talked about previously. I have been keeping a regular eating schedule but I am still getting the light-headed feeling, dizziness, tremors in the legs, chronic fatigue, irritability that are listed in the Home Remedies section of the Ayurveda book. I’ve been eating some raisins or an apple, or drinking some fruit juice having a minimal effect. It is nothing incapacitating, but I don’t like the feeling. I was learning some new database concepts at work and found it harder to concentrate. One other measurable effect is the loss of 6 pounds. As for the media silence, I’m noticing a subtle shift in my increased awareness of things, whether it is tactile response or hearing and smelling. I’m noticing the pungent scent of the lilac bushes, the rough feeling of the dishrag, the rhythm of the clock ticking or the furnace running. There has also been a staggering amount of boredom. However, I have not yet noticed a difference physically regarding the muscle tightness, backache, and sciatica doing the Vata themed asana practice. My understanding is that the tempo of the asana is directed more at calming the mind than as a physical therapy.

I’m finding it to be annoying to family as I work to adjust to the apparent withdrawal from the dietary restrictions. I am verbalizing my inner thoughts and while that is usually something my wife wants to hear, that is not the case when I’m whining to have some chocolate cake when we were at a restaurant celebrating her birthday. I’m still distracted looking toward the end of the experiment and what I’m going to eat than what I’m experiencing in the moment.

Eight days in and I’m observing a feeling of isolation and loneliness with the dietary part of the experiment. I was sitting with my meditation group and one of the folks brought in some homemade cookies for the talk afterward. I was the only person not to have any because of the dairy and wheat in them. I’m feeling a lot more empathy for folks who through some medical condition have to change their diet and the resistance they encounter in society. The saturation of these products in food has been a real eye opener.

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Testing Ayurveda’s Applications: Conclusion

I’ve come to the end of the experiment and from the media hiatus standpoint I find myself reluctant to dive back into the water. For 2 weeks I’ve been viewing nothing on the T.V., radio, or the Internet except for checking on the weather, and deleting Spam from my email accounts. Where I’ve definitely missed watching the Hockey playoffs I have not found myself in some state of withdrawal over the rest of it. I did not lunge for the mouse to click on HuffingtonPost to get caught up on info I might have missed. My initial state of boredom got filled in getting a head start on the personal readings assignment for class and also sifting through music I might use for teaching a yoga class. I’ve also kept up on our laundry. Technically, I did not see any change in chronic pain that was part of the impetus to do this part of the experiment. That was whether the pain was a physical manifestation of psychological stress. But there was a subtle shift, or perhaps a reminder of what I already knew, that I have the say in whether to watch something or not. Sometimes in the tumult I forget that simple fact and get sucked in by making sure to tune in tomorrow and the next day and the day after that for updates that are not really updating anything. I did watch a hockey game after breaking the media fast, and my observations were that it was loud. I had to turn the volume down from where I would usually have it. Also, I found myself a step behind the action. Hockey being a fast moving game, I could normally keep up or know where the puck was going, even ahead of the camera. I was definitely behind the pace. I’ve read about silent meditation retreats where a person was silent for a year or something and could not comprehend spoken language for a time after returning from the retreat. I was not that radically shifted, but my experience with watching the hockey game reminded me of it.

Regarding the dietary changes consuming no dairy or wheat, the original test about whether it would affect my sinuses did not bring about any tangible results. Physically, I lost 7 pounds, and the suspected hypoglycemia dissipated. Like the media part, I did not dive in eating a pan pizza or a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The psychological affects were more apparent. A few years ago my wife and I did the South Beach diet, and I guess misery loves company, because doing this experiment alone was more isolating than the previous experience. I was able to eventually practice being with the experience and not labeling it as good or bad which diffused some of the whining impulse.  Also as I mentioned before, the awareness of the saturation of these ingredients in most foods has given me new empathy and respect for people who through personal choice or medical necessity have excluded these items from their diet.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Treating the Kapha Girl

As the sister science to yoga, Ayurveda plays a significant role in the Axis Yoga Teacher Training program. Students complete an experiment applying Ayurveda to their life to see how it effects their health and well-being. This student’s efforts to care for her Kapha dosha lead to a sense of awareness and empowerment.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Introduction

Anyone who knows anything about Ayurveda can take one look at me and guess that I am kapha. I have the dark curly hair, curvy body, softer than soft skin, and a soothing voice. All of this is obvious. As I read and learned more about the kapha dosha it became more and more apparent how much of my composition is taken up by this abundant dosha. Slow moving, check. Satisfied doing nothing, check. Prone to depression, check. Full of compassion, smothering, great memory, codependent, clings to emotions, radiates love, full of mucus, overweight, easily chilled. Check, check, check! The good and the bad, I have got them all.

At moments I am representative of kapha in balance. Unfortunately, I often exude many of the characteristics of kapha out of balance. My experiment was to challenge myself to treat my kapha well by reducing it and not allowing it to overflow in its abundance. I started with the observation that I am kapha dominant. I then formulated the hypothesis that my general well being would improve by reducing kapha in my life. To reduce kapha I decided to wake up earlier, get more vigorous exercise, keep myself warm by using sauna and limiting cool drinks, and eliminating sugar. My experiment was ten days total. I happened to be sort of sick for the first 8 days of the experiment. This caused me to be a little more lax than I would have liked to be. Maybe it was the illness, or it could have just been my kapha nature to resist the challenge of change. Either way, I learned a lot from my life style modifications even if they were less drastic than I had originally intended.

While kapha is the majority of my constitution, I am also easily vata aggravated. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder at age 14, a typical vata ailment. I am very sensitive in every possible way, including having a sensitive nervous system and subtle body. So part of my challenge is to reduce my kapha while also taking care of my vata. My vata has been very out of balance in the past few months for obvious reasons. I am busy, plain and simple busy. This leaves me with the obligation of getting active to reduce my kapha, but to also do less to take care of my vata.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Time

Sleep is one area that I am not a typical kapha. I do usually sleep hard and well, but I am not a marathon sleeper who can sleep the whole day away. I typically go to sleep by 11 and wake up without difficulty by 730. I thought that reducing my sleep could still be useful. Day one of the experiment I woke up at 6:15 AM, a full two hours before I really needed to be awake. I woke up early just fine, but then was a typical kapha. In those two hours I did not accomplish much of anything. I took my sweet time with my morning cleansing and breakfast. I crawled back into bed at least three more times. Never with the intention or want to go back to sleep, it just felt good to lay there. I thoroughly enjoyed the extra time in the morning and loved my new sense of awareness of my tendency to want to chill out and do nothing. More than anything it made me smile to myself. That first day I was painfully tired by 10AM. I recognized that I pushed myself a little too far by waking up a full 2 hours before I needed to. The remainder of the experiment I woke up between 6:45 and 7:30. There were a couple of days that I really struggled to pull myself out of bed, but I never got tired throughout the day again.

The main thing that I did accomplish in those two hours was practicing my sadhana. Up until this experiment I had only been practicing in the evening. Switching to the morning has revolutionized my personal practice. When I was doing it in the evening it felt much more like a chore than something that I was doing for myself. It added to the list of things that I needed to do, it added to my vata anxiety.  I have started doing sadhana that is good for vata. I am doing a lot of belly breathing and bee humming breath followed by So Hum meditation. Throughout the entire experiment I made time for at least a short sadhana practice. My anxiety has been greatly relieved in the past two weeks. This could be for a variety of reasons but one factor is definitely waking up early. Waking up early has allowed me to integrate sadhana into my life in a much more meaningful way.  Waking up early also ensures that I have time every day to do the cleansing practices of neti and tongue scraping. Both of which are very helpful for my mucous friendly kapha body. Extra time in the morning also allows me to check a few things off of my to do list, which is tremendous for reducing my anxiety. For example, I usually think about and maybe prepare my breakfast and lunch at night. Now I stop myself the second I start to think about the next day’s food because I know I will have time to be more present while preparing food the next morning. I get home from work around 8 pm so even small tasks like thinking about breakfast or sadhana become overwhelming with so little time before I need to go to bed. I have recognized for years that my energy is drastically different in the morning than it is in the evening. In the early morning I am more productive, optimistic, impulsive, emotive, and creative. In the evening I tend to be duller. This correlates with the doshic times of day and makes sense that I am better served to leave simple tasks to the morning rather than overwhelming myself in the evening.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Warmth

When starting the experiment I envisioned myself working out in the gym and going to hot yoga classes to do more vigorous exercise. Doing vigorous exercise while sick was against my intuition. I did increase my activity level though. 6 out of the 8 days that I worked during the experiment I made time for a brisk walk during my lunch break. Some days I only had time for 15 minutes of walking quickly but others I had 30. On two days when I was not working I went on long walks, about two hours each. One day I taught a fast paced yoga class to friends which served as a work out for me as well. I also made time to go to a kundilini class as well as an ashtanga class with Richard Freeman. Both classes were very vigorous. The most enlightening thing about the exercise portion of my experiment was realizing that I have been drawn to appropriate exercise for kapha for several years. While I enjoy relaxing and restorative yoga classes, my yoga preference has always been kundilini which tends to be physically challenging and creates sweat. I also love heated yoga. Particularly, heated fast moving yoga. The experiment reinforced the fact that I need to make time for such practices. Keeping myself warm was easy during the experiment because the weather was very warm for many of the days in the past two weeks. I made sure to get time in the sun to heat myself up in that way. I also went in a sauna one time. The main thing I have done to keep warm is increase my intake of warm fluids. I have had an aversion to really cold water for a long time, but I often find myself drinking it because it is what is available. I usually drink room temperature water. During the experiment I started drinking significantly more luke warm and hot water. This seemed to help control my temperature and keep me more comfortable. It also felt soothing to my throat and chest and greatly improved my digestion. I have started drinking a cup of warm or hot water as soon as I wake up which instantly induce a bowel movement. This is a practice that I see myself keeping up with.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Diet

Eliminating sugar and reintroducing it has been illuminating. I have always noticed that I am more sensitive to sugar than other people. I eat it and often develop a stomach ache and sometimes my throat becomes inflamed. I had eliminated sugar for 28 days during our first experiment. That is the longest I have ever gone without sugar. The first time I had it my throat was immediately on fire and I woke up the next morning to my gums bleeding. When I ate it a couple more times the results were not as dramatic but my stomach did hurt if I had more than a couple bites. Then I went off sugar again for this ten day experiment. I reintroduced sugar a couple of days ago. I had some rice pudding with a large meal in the middle of the day. No negative effects were apparent. The following day I ate a lot of sugar throughout the day and then ended my day with a cookie minutes before getting into bed. I woke up early to terrifying anxiety inducing nightmares. The anxiety lingered through the first 4 hours of being awake. It is apparent to me that sugar acts like poison to my body and it is my duty to greatly limit it in my diet.

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The Bathing Elephant Goddess: Conclusion

While I learned a lot through the whole experiment the greatest gift has been to begin to really cultivate my sadhana practice. This was only able to happen with waking up earlier. It has been a pleasant surprise that reducing my kapha has helped balance my vata as well. I have gained a new sense of awareness which empowers me to make better decisions about how to treat myself on all levels.

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Be Gentle: An Experiment with Ahimsa and Tapas

Axis Yoga inspires students to apply the yogic principles of yamas (restraints) and niyamas (observances) to their lives through a personal experiment. This student’s yama and niyama experiment turned out to be both surprising and liberating.

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Be Gentle: Introduction

The moment we started to talk about the yama and niyama experiments I was filled with anxiety. Breaking in to groups felt like a life sentence. Which part of myself am I going to delve into and work with? I knew I was being asked to take a hard look at myself, and that is never easy. I settled with ahimsa for my yama.

I was introduced to the concept of ahimsa several years ago. It is the restraint of non-violence, or non-harming. This seems fairly simple at the surface. Restrain from violence, don’t hit or kick? Easy! When adding the fact that yamas are to be practiced at the physical, verbal, and mental levels the task of Ahimsa becomes much more challenging. Which thoughts and words are harmful to yourself or others or harder yet the collective prana of the universe?

When we broke into groups I had a very clear sense of where I most needed to work on ahimsa in my life. As I listened to my group mates describe their habits of yelling and getting angry at others I felt that I truly could not relate. I said with conviction that my most violent acts are my thoughts towards myself. I went as far as to say that I really did not have any harmful thoughts or verbalizations towards the outside world, that I took it all in for myself. One of my group mates first response to that was “hurting yourself does hurt those around you.” This got me thinking. The first few days of the experiment I did not have much of a plan, I just started observing my thoughts closely. We all know this is a huge chore in and of itself. I was astonished by what I found. I do have harmful thoughts and verbalizations towards others!

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