Benefits of Yoga
by David Fishman
Ask anyone who practices yoga why and you’ll get a variety of answers. “It makes my day go better.” “It quiets my mind.” “It keeps me healthy.” “Everything flows better afterward.” “My back pain and stiffness are gone.” And “it just plain feels good.”
Yoga can be practiced anywhere, anytime—day or night, summer or winter. You don’t need a health club membership, a personal trainer or any particular equipment. One workout and you’re on your way to developing greater strength, flexibility, vitality and energy—as well as deeper relaxation.
No matter what your age or level of fitness, the benefits of yoga are available to you. I like to think of yoga as a complete reconditioning process. On a physical level, it helps us to develop a fit and agile body, while training us to breathe more efficiently. And on a mental level, yoga’s focusing and relaxation qualities can not only prevent heart disease and strengthen the immune system, but they can also reduce stress by virtue of their effect on the physiological reactions triggered by stress--blood pressure, respiratory and heart rate, perspiration and muscle tension. And by moving each joint in the body through its full range of motion, yoga is even said to be able to reverse the aging process.
Yet even more impressive than its usefulness in health maintenance and injury rehabilitation is yoga’s contribution to competitive and recreational athletes seeking ever higher levels of performance. While increased range of motion and respiratory efficiency enable the athlete to train harder and more effectively, the ability to concentrate and to shut out noise and other distractions contributes to the total integration of body and mind—often enabling the athlete to enter “the zone” nearly at will.
No wonder we see so many runners, hikers, cyclists, dancers, skiers, swimmers, tennis and golf players, and the like in yoga classes. So isn’t it time to ask yourself what yoga can do for you?
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INTRODUCING…
TIBETAN HEART YOGA:
How Yoga Works
Yoga came to Tibet from India over a thousand years ago and was quickly assimilated into Tibet’s rich cultural heritage. Tibetan Heart Yoga, a 1,000 year old practice, as it has been passed down through the Gelukpa tradition of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet, teaches us to work from the inside as well as the outside to experience the benefits of our yoga practice on many levels—mentally, physically and spiritually. And so the practice provides us with roadmaps both to our health and to our spiritual evolution. Combining meditation, breathing practices and physical poses with a deep intention to help others transforms not only our yoga practice, but our entire lives.
It’s helpful for our practice of heart yoga to understand a bit about how our mind-body functions. According to yoga philosophy, our physical body, like the outside layer of an onion, is the outermost layer of our being. Beneath our body, supporting and sustaining it, lays our breath, and beneath that we find a ghost-like network of pathways or channels through which energetic currents flow. These currents resonate with our breath, it is said, like two strings on a guitar. This energetic layer is the place of most subtle union where our body and our mind meet. For beneath these energetic currents lie our very thoughts which ride upon these currents like a rider on a horse. And what lies beneath the layer of our thoughts? At the deepest level seeds planted by our past thoughts, words and deeds ripen in our mind instant by instant driving our thoughts and determining how we see our world
At the core of our energetic body are three channels running vertically along the central axis of our body. Just in front of the backbone is the central channel. When energy and thoughts flow freely here we feel bright and happy. The purpose of all forms of yoga is to cause the energies to run in the central channel. However, on either side and spiraling around the central channel run two adjacent channels, channels connected with our negative emotions—anger, desire, selfishness. These harmful emotions cause the side channels to swell and choke off the free flow of energy in the central channel at what are known as the chakra points (particularly in the area of the heart), causing discomfort, distress, disease—and eventually aging and death.
Most yoga traditions work from the outside in. We stretch and pull at our physical body; we make our breathing deep and regular—and this settles down the energetic currents, automatically calming the thoughts that ride upon them. But heart yoga works from the inside as well. We intentionally think the most beautiful thoughts of all, the ones that flow in the most perfect way. And since the energetic currents are tied to these same thoughts, they start to flow calmly and freely within the pathways. This in turn causes the breath to slow and deepen, in turn energizing and rejuvenating our physical body.
So the practice of Tibetan Heart Yoga benefits the heart in two ways. Unique postures open up tight areas around the heart--in the chest, shoulders, arms, neck and upper back. And focusing our thoughts in a positive way cultivates an openheartedness that leaves us feeling far more expansive, both during our practice and after. At Mountain Yoga, Tibetan Heart Yoga is presented in a vinyasa style—it’s an active practice that combines movement and breath in a rhythmic flow. This adds yet another benefit—the flowing movements offer a cardio-intensive experience, physically strengthening the heart.
In a new book, The Tibetan Book of Yoga, Geshe Michael Roach presents this distinctive program for yoga on a physical and spiritual level. ‘Geshe Michael’, the first American to earn the title of geshe, or master of Buddhist learning from Sera Mey Tibetan Monastery, in the course of his ongoing efforts to find and preserve ancient Tibetan Buddhist texts, discovered a number of previously unknown Tibetan works on yoga. In his extraordinary book, ‘Geshe Michael’ discusses the ideas and insights presented in these texts, and he offers us a specific regime of yoga postures and meditations—appropriate for beginning and experienced students alike--to help us incorporate this wisdom into our daily lives.
In his book, ‘Geshe Michael’ talks of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. “Wherever he goes, whatever he says, he repeats one thing over and over. Despite all the differences between the people on this Earth, we are all the same in one way. We all want things to go well for us, and nobody wants any of the problems or trouble of life. But problems and trouble do come to us; we are never free of them for very long. Wisdom is understanding where these problems really come from, and how to stop them.”
Tibetan Heart Yoga is a path that awakens in us this understanding.
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