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Wellness Column – What is Stress? In the 1930’s, Dr. Hans Selye first described the “stress response” as a series of chemical changes initiated by the body’s autonomic nervous system. This was the body’s reaction to danger, otherwise known as the fight or flight syndrome. Today, we know stress is a major cause of heart disease, stroke and other diseases. The physiological responses to stress are well known. Basically your entire nervous, circulatory, endocrine and immune systems go on alert. This includes: 1. increased heart and respiratory rate 2. increased blood sugar, for quick energy 3. cooler skin temperature 4.blood shunts from digestive organs to large muscles to prepare for movement. Our ancestors found the fight or flight mechanism very useful for fighting woolly mammoths or running from midnight raids. Unfortunately, today’s dangers are more subtle and prolonged, requiring a different kind of response. Recently, we have come to understand another face of stress, known as the “possum response”. Most of us think of stress only in terms of the over-arousal/exhaustion response known as fight or flight. However, the parasympathetic nervous system has its own stress response: depression, passivity and withdrawal. Shutting down life force also inhibits your internal functioning. This can lead to disease. Illness associated with excessive parasympathetic activity includes asthma, ulcers, chronic fatigue syndrome and cancer. Most of us react to stress by activating a combination of the two nervous system responses. At first glance it appears that our bodies have not evolved as fast as our societies. However, look again. Perhaps our challenge of finding an appropriate response to stress is our next evolutionary step. Thus, ushering in an age of conscious co-creation with the intention not just to survive but also to thrive. Not long before he died, Dr. Jonas Salk was suggesting that we, as a species, have gone through our Darwinian, survival of the fittest stage. We are not only the fittest, we are history’s most dangerous predator. If we follow our biological path, we maybe headed for extinction. The next phase of evolution, according to Salk, is beyond biology, It is the evolution of consciousness. We are evolving from Homo Sapiens to Homo Novus. The new criterion for fitness is wisdom. We begin the long journey of transformation with ourselves, one step at a time. We begin by making wise choices and by learning how to respond with awareness, compassion and creativity rather than reacting in the old fight or flight mode. Deepak Chopra has articulated an interesting road map of what life with greater awareness will look like. Rather than reacting to stimulus with the fight or flight response, he imagines 5 more evolved responses. 1. the restful awareness response – a moment of silent witnessing 2. the intuitive response – beyond win/lose, this is a holistic response that leads to spontaneous right action 3. the creative response – from intuitive intelligence emerges something totally new, conflict is resolved with win/win solutions 4. the visionary response – the ability to see far into the future 5. the sacred response – how do my actions serve the evolution of life? (excerpted from Creating a Whole Life, an Interactive Wellness Workbook, by Elizabeth Andes-Bell) |
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The Fall Practice – Part 2 Learning to stay open involves an awareness of where you habitually contract and armor the body. However, it goes deeper than that. Once you have opened, once you have increased the flow of life force, one must learn how to tolerate feeling so alive. The temptation is to return to the old patterns of misalignment to dampen the flow and dissipate the energy. Other ways to kill it off is to get mental or discharge the energy with a lot of talking. The great challenge is to stay in the flow and present. When you are drawn into emotional reactions or tempted by your personal story, you do not energize it. You simply stay in the impersonal flow of the energy of the universe moving through you. When you do act, your actions unfold from center. They are decisive and effective. Staying present to the ebb and flow of the energy; knowing when to be quiet and when to act; coming fully into presence so the wave of creation can move through you are the skills of the seasoned warrior. |
Asana of the Month – Parshvakonasana (bent knee side stretch)
1. Begin in Prasarita Padottanasana (standing split) to open the perineum and ground and open the feet. 2. Rotate the feet, torso and pelvis into Parshvottanasana (see photo). The front foot, pubic bone and upper body are oriented to the saggital (forward-back) axis. The back foot is at a 45-degree angle. Begin constructing a stable back foot by placing all 4 corners of the foot on the floor as you lift the arch. Steer the pelvis to align the hips evenly on the horizontal axis. 3. Bend the front knee to a 90-degree angle, directly over the ankle. Place the same side hand on the floor or a block directly inside the front foot. The wrist should be at a 90-degree angle and all 4 corners of the palm make equal contact with the floor. The back arm extends up at a 45-degree angle past the ear. 4. Hold a clear movement goal of the pelvis facing front and the upper body rotating 45 degrees side. The head rotates 180 degrees. It is important to know the architecture of the pose. How you think about the form will begin to shift the neurological patterns that construct your movement. This is a two-step process. First, you are opening the joints to work evenly. This involves releasing hypertonic (perpetually contracted) muscles and activating hypotonic (perpetually flaccid) ones so that the body revolves around the vertical axis (like a planet). 5. Once you understand the form, the body will open and become more pliant as you incorporate an understanding of how all poses spin. From the outside, the pose looks like a solid object. The action is on the inside. The pose comes to life when you engage in a process of mapping and spinning. We map to find a center point. It can be anywhere, the back foot, the front leg, the muladhara (root) or anahata (heart) chakras, anywhere you place your awareness. This process helps you to reorient to the source, become fully present, and engage with a living field of creation in which you are both witness to and participant in your own transformation. 6. Spin the legs and feet in, spin the pubic bone to the front, spin your heart to the side, spin your nose toward the back leg. Make sure that the structure you have built can contain this flow of energy. What makes this an advanced warrior pose is that you remain open to the intensity of flow by remaining quietly, alertly centered and poised for action. |
Aerobics and Weight Training
Training takes a fresh state of mind and a full store of energy. Personally, I can’t do aerobics first and then have enough energy left to sustain a weight workout. I need my mind and body fresh. Yet some people say they need the rush and heat of aerobics to warm them up for training. It makes sense to me to use up the carbohydrates stored from breakfast or last night’s dinner for weight workouts, since that’s the main fuel used in weight training. Presumably, once those carbohydrates (or glycogen) are depleted, you can more rapidly dip into the “fat” stores and use that to fuel the aerobics. Otherwise you spend 20 minutes of aerobic time just to use up glycogen before getting to the fat. Plus, after the focus of training, it’s a relief to “space out” on a stationary bike or stair machine and read. It doesn’t much matter if the muscles are fatigued or if the brain is fully engaged to do this. But, you have to keep in mind your main objective. If you want strength, definition, optimal muscle function and to lose body fat, then resistance training would be the first priority. If you’re in training for an endurance event, then the main focus would be on aerobics, with weights as a supplement. So, the question is, when to fit the aerobic portion in? Either immediately after training ( or before, if you must), later on that day or on different days. You need a minimum of three aerobic workouts per week, 20 to 40 minutes each, to maintain cardiovascular conditioning and promote more fat loss. (excerpted from A Woman’s Book of Strength , by Karen Andes. You can purchase this book directly from the Life in Motion Bookstore at www.lifeinmotion.com). |
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