Yoga, Neuroscience, and the Subtle Body | Subtle Yoga

Transcript

hi welcome next my weekly livestream trying to do him once a week these days and so I've been cooking up quite a lot of online courses lately and also getting ready to teach this weekend I'm teaching about the neurobiology and neurobiology and the subtle body this weekend here in Nashville so I'm doing a bunch of research and spending way too much time sitting here in front of my computer by the way I really am looking forward to next week getting out and taking lots of walks and doing lots more area so anyway I thought I would do a livestream today I'm just waiting a little bit till some people come on because I announced it and people said they were coming and I have a few questions from from students as well so I'll talk about them so yeah I've been wanting to explore this topic neurobiology and the subtle body for a while and here's the reason why you know I've been teaching about the chakra system in the subtle body since oh gosh like 1995 or 96 or something and very interested in the topic I've spent a lot of time studying at lots of time practicing with my system also but you know I tend to come to this topic from a psychology perspective not from a neuro psychology or a neuro biology perspective so that's what has compelled me about this about this study as I thought you know I've been looking into neuroscience for the past 10 years and what's underpinning the the mechanisms underneath the the yoga practices how they affect the brain how they improve the nervous system and really the as interesting as that stuff is I I started to understand and I have to talk about this in terms of the subtle body because clearly the central nervous system and the central nervous system and the sushumna are going to have something in common with each other you know they they have to in fact the subtle body is I would say an ancient map of the central nervous system and with with a lot of with a lot to say about the autonomic nervous system particularly hi Mitzi I'm glad you're here so since the subtle body is the the ancient way of describing the central nervous system with a lot of information about the autonomic nervous system so what's the difference the central nervous system is you know that you could say that's sort of the biggest frame you know you can see these pictures of the nervous system the central nervous system is like the base cream and then from that central nervous system we have you know somatic peripheral and then from the from I think it's out of the peripheral nervous system we get the autonomic nervous system and that present is sympathetic comparison but it's kind of you know it's this whole schema that they that the biologists draw but the piece that's important about the autonomic nervous system is that we can have some control over it largely it's automatic it's autonomic automatic so your temperature your breathing your heart rate your metabolism your digestion hormonal functions all that stuff is happening below the level of consciousness and what we know from neuroscience is that 95 percent of what the brain does is below the level of consciousness so you know what then we have these stories like of Krishna Acharya or Swami Rama and other great Yogi's being able to control some of these autonomic functions and then you start to think well maybe science doesn't have it completely figured out yet and that there is capacity for us to have more on and on more conscious control over autonomic functions I think that's a fascinating you know rabbit hole to go down but I want to get to some of the questions and I'm trying to limit these to 15-minute sessions so I'm gonna get to some of the questions in a moment let me just say a couple other sort of big picture frame e things which is that so I as I mentioned they first started I first was looking at the psychology of the subtle body and now I'm looking at both the psychology and the neurobiology of the subtle body and my second thing the second thing I want to say is this if the framework that we have used in this culture the framework of scientific materialism was accurate then we wouldn't have all the health problems that we have okay so so that doesn't mean that scientific materialism isn't a piece of the pub the puzzle of course it is but but if it was the whole picture then we wouldn't have you know the massive massive amounts of chronic diseases mental health problems and addiction that we're currently faced with in our culture because whenever problem you have the way where you see its origins is going to dictate how you address the problem so if you see the problem as pain and you give it you give opioids to treat the pain that's you know then you end up with an addiction crisis and you're scratching your head going why isn't this working well because you're understanding pain from the perspective of scientific materialism when in effect something like pain and the reason I'm talking about pain in vitam is because that was one question something like pain what the research has started to demonstrate the broader research has started demonstrated these are not exclusively biomechanical processes they also involve the mind and they involve family structures they both culturally involve our our social position there's there's so many factors these social determinants of how so many factors involved in why somebody has paint chronic pain or persistent pain so you know to go back to this this idea if we look at the human society really looks at the human structure as if you're basically a car that somehow broken or missing some chemicals are fluid and if we can fix all that balanced stuff you know change the broken part or put some other fluid in there fix it or some other chemicals in there to fix it then you'll be fine and it's just an incredibly small narrow perspective on human existence but the subtle body gives us is a non materialistic perspective on human existence on human ontology and a non materialistic causal flow of our problems so if we think our problems are caused by you know something chemical or something that we have to fix like you don't have enough serotonin in your system you know and we just dumped the serotonin or the serotonin selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors into the system and think that's gonna solve depression the problem is that we've come from an extremely tiny narrow definition of what human beings are because our definition is tiny and narrow that's why we can't solve the problems from that system with that system I hope this is making sense so so what I'm what I am suggesting is the subtle body offers us a more expansive perspective on human existence it takes that central channel that central nervous system and expands it it expands it into a broader definition of who we are as human beings and it expands our ideas of causal of causality what causality is is what causes what causes our problems right so that's one of the things I'd love about about studying the subtle body and and about using it as a way to reinterpret or expand our definitions are scientific materialistic definitions of what this system is what this body-mind-spirit is okay so with that in mind I you know what what what traditionally people have done who are trying to explore the science of chakra system is go oh you know your crown chakra is associated with your pineal gland and your third eyes associated with your pituitary and your heart and your throat is the thyroid thymus you know adrenals pecker you know the you know the deal and I what I would suggest it's that a reductive perspective because you know scientists used to talk about the nervous system the endocrine system the immune system and now it's the neuro endocrine immune system because what we're seeing is that human beings operate in systems nested systems and everything is affecting every other part so when I look at the subtle body I'm not just looking at the to it you know pineal pituitary thyroid that's interesting and useful but what's much more interesting is hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress what does that do to the system how does that how are the chakras working in coordination and then creating creating function or dysfunction in the system right what about the hypothalamic pituitary thyroid axis how is that affecting the function of the thorn thyroid metabolism stress right because that's also interfacing with hypothermic pituitary adrenal axis hypothalamic pituitary go noida lacks a second chakra gut brain X access third chart you know so there's there's this whole new understanding of the nervous system as nested systems that is opening up the way that we can understand the chakras beyond the sort of reductive glands that are related to each chakra another key P and so that's what I'm gonna be talking about all weekend and this workshop another key piece here is and then they're key piece there's so many things I want to say but I got to talk about for two days so so here just for 15 minutes I'm sorry I lost my train of thought but anyway the the so I was talking about the nervous system and how that's related to the chakras and then I was gonna say something else and I can't remember but oh I know here it is hello menopause brain it's coming back so the other key piece I wanted to say was that we tend as Westerners because we come from the scientific materialistic perspective we tend to say oh here's my body and this always six trucker is this right Brad chakra is my heart chakra when actually the Yogi's would say no no no here's your subtle body and from the subtle body your physical body manifests so your chakras are not in your body your body is in your chakras and that also is another shifting paradigm that I think is so useful to think about my body is in my chakras and so if I go to some of these subtle body techniques which include asanas which include pranayamas which include mantra which include mudra visualize Bhavana visualization there's so many different of these techniques we go to these different subtle body techniques and we start to tweak the vibration of the pranic the Parana kenner ji that can have the effect on the physical structure if you're thinking in that those causal terms it makes sense and it also um it also helps for me to sort of see past a lot of the fluffy chakra dogma that's out there because there's a ton of fluffy chakra dogma out there right I remember walking into a Barnes and Noble like 15 years ago and on this table there was this big table set up and and there are all these little kits and it was balanced your chakra kit and I had like an essential oil and a stone and a card and it was 1199 I was like eleven my neg balance your chakras that's a great deal you know it's it completely minimizes the importance of this system and that the end what I think we are gonna see within the next ten twenty me okay maybe fifty years is an awareness that the subtle body is the causal structure of the physical body and that sound and vibrational healing is it's the cutting edge of medicine right now I'm not right now it will be I think it is right now to some extent but it's still really kind of fringe but sound and vibrational healing because sound and vibrational healing go into the subtle body structures and from those subtle body structures it's from those so that the subtle body vibration we can shift the vibration of the physical structures it right now it's out might sound like a little woowoo Ashville out-there stuff but I don't I think it won't in you know I think partly it sounds woowoo because there's so much you know rainbow Dharma chakra garbage out there right now and and and it minimizes or it just detracts from the import of the system and the potential to utilize this system to make really significant changes in the way not only in our personal health but in the way we see health in general right to move beyond that scientific materialism paradigm that you are a car that's broken and you just need the right part or the right fluid or chemical to fix you that system doesn't work which is why we're in a huge healthcare crisis and in Western countries you know 87% of the money that we spend on healthcare which in the United States by the way is three point four trillion dollars per year eighty seven percent of that goes to chronic diseases right and and Western medicine has very poor success rate of chronic diseases very good at you know if you break your arm or you have an acute problem emergency medicine that's great chronic diseases not just not that good you know and we look to systems like Chinese medicine and Ayurveda they have much more success rate with with chronic diseases because partly of the ontological perspective that they take on human existence so they take a much more subtle perspective on what we are as human beings okay so let me get to some of the questions thank you all for being here by the way yes Mitzi your chakras are not in your body your body is in your chakras according to the according to the Yogi's ok so let me get to some of the questions and if you have any questions I'll stick around for a few more minutes if you have any questions I'm very happy - very happy to address so let's get to these are some practical questions here Carol asks let's see she's dealing with a lot of pain and having to take medication and she wants to know how to get the prana flowing seek answers in the subtle body the gross body needs help at the subtler level yes I agree above to have prioritized suggestions well of course I can't work with you you know like I know one-on-one therapy session that would take me you know 75 minutes or more but I can give you some short answers about pain what in terms of pain we do want to help people - we want to help people find places in the body that are not in pain so that so that we're changing the messages that are going up to the brain so what's what's critical is just say it but to prioritize what's critical when you're working with chronic or persistent pain is to make sure that you're prioritizing soft care and you're spending 15 or 20 minutes a day trying to get the sympathetic nervous system to activation to decrease so that might be legs up the wall that may be another a different restorative pose it might be increasing your exhales that can be really helpful just slow very slowly gradually exhale 2 3 a few times - 4 - few times 5 a few times 6 that might be helpful and then making sure that you bring awareness into parts of your body that that are not feeling painful finding parts your body that are feeling good and because that's going to send messages to the brain that it's not a global thing but the whole body some pain a pain is really hard and I think there's a lot of things in in yoga that can help I have an e-book I wrote called the site what's it called this I know and he's called the subtle secrets of pranayama and it's just a you know I don't know maybe 20 page ebook that gives some very MOT sort of very subtle and visualization practices that you can use with pranayama so it's not aggressive from EMS I think sometimes you get really aggressive with our pranayama so I hope that's helpful Carol and you know feel free we we can we can chat more about it if you wanted to do a private session Paula writes and says I've been wondering about ways to calm vagal tone I can see diaphragmatic breathing and some pranayama make me a path but wondered what else oh my goodness Paula like that's the whole point of my teaching um I should say it's part of the point of my teaching calm vagal tone so actually I think what you would say is improve vagal tone I think that would be like a little more accurate scientifically improve baby Todd or combo sympathetic part of the nervous system and increase activation and improve resilience increased activation and the parasympathetic part of the nervous system so let's talk about some things for vagal tone just some brief interventions I like to talk about brief interventions when I'm doing things like this and also when I work with mental health clinicians because brief interventions are way to think about just you know what can we do in the short term that can help people are in so much if people are struggling so much you know one of the things I think that is really useful from the yoga tradition for a bagel temp for improving bagel tone there's so many things but one thing I think is really important is interoceptive practices and that means finding creative ways to help people to notice positive or neutral sensations in the body so the course that I'm coming out with the yoga and neuroscience connection is filled with suggestions for that my trainings are filled with suggestions for doing that because it's not as simple as notice how your body feels although that's a great start but it's not it's not it's not as simple as that there are many progressive ways to get people into sensations in the body so I do think and and research is demonstrating that developing better maps and more map differentiation which means the brain has better maps of the body and and also differentiates sensations and parts of your body I think yoga is an amazing way to develop that skill set and to help people develop that skill set and and I think that that's an incredible tool for improving vagal tone so belly breathing yes if belly breathing is great and belly breathing is only one tool and if belly breathing is done without an interceptive awareness then you're sort of negating the benefits of it right so it it's there's so many different ways to get into belly breathing and it's not the only tool and it's not the only way to breathe there are many other ways of breathing in fact frankly I find helping people extend their exhales to be even more beneficial then then belly breathing that it I mean it depends of course but I find that to be one of the most effective techniques and even adding a little bit of an inhale at the top oh my gosh I didn't mean to stand for 21 minutes thank you all for being here though I've got one more question and then we're gonna wrap this up so Murray wrote and said incorporating gentle ways to bring more wellness to awareness to the pelvic floor from we're grounding in the system alternative to mula bandha mula bandha you know it's like it's like belly breathe it's like it's not the only technique there's lots of other things we can do so one thing I've been working with lately Murray is constructive rest where you know could start to rust in your life let's see I could do it here so you're lying on the floor just with your feet up with this maybe knees resting so constructive rest is our great good stir I just just dusted the floor a little there constructive rest is nice position to get into for interceptive awareness of the pelvic floor because the what happens is your lumbar spine goes into a little bit more of it's that flexion but it goes into neutral right so you take take the curve out of a lumbar spine goes into neutral and then you can feel some more spaciousness in the pelvic floor and what I love actually for pelvic floor breathing as I start my students at lumbar spine breathing awareness and then moved to sacral breathing awareness and then move to pelvic floor breathing awareness with the inhale letting the die of all the diaphragms do this on the inhale and the exhale just a softness so the inhale inhale can be an opportunity not to push but to allow the diaphragms to open the respiratory diaphragm as well as the pelvic diaphragm and letting that open so that's one way I found to be quite useful in working with the pelvic floor but you know public floor there's there's like a whole it's a whole field to stay everything is a field of study oh my god there's so much out there okay so I better wrap it for today for those for you coming to my workshop tomorrow I'm looking forward to seeing you for those of you who signed up for my yoga and neuroscience connection of course it's on track and we are going to release it I think at 12 a.m. on on Tuesday mornings so really excited to get that rolling thank you all for for the feedback and for the support I'm really so happy to get to share this and I'm so happy that so many people are are responding and excited about excited about the course to you okay thank you for being here namaste I'll talk to you again next week