Yoga, Stress, and Learning to Drop It.

I just published a new blog post at Truth a Paradox, and wanted to share the link...

"Yoga, Stress, and Learning to Drop It."
http://wp.me/peYHj-9f

-Jackson

I liked. I liked even more the one about Mara returning, which I had not seen before. Not 100% sure I knew you had a blog at all.

Thanks, Ona

If you are talking about typical yoga-class yoga, no. But there's a very interesting thread on Tibetan and Hindu yogic practices going on at KFD now:

http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/thread/4377529/%E2%80%8BTummo

Nice post, Jackson. I liked your description of shavasana, and what you were saying about the tensing and releasing of muscles made me think of the way Namkhai Norbu teaches preparatory Dzogchen meditations sometimes. Basically, you focus on an object and then relax and open up, and if thoughts/feelings/sensations "catch" you, you return to that intense focus, and you go back and forth until you can relax without separating from or being conditioned by the flow of experience. Then you repeat this focus/open, focus/open rhythmic process with no-object (a formless object, or formless qualities of experience like space and clarity). It struck me that this is very analogous to what you pointed out about the muscle relaxation process, in which the flexing of attention gives one a "feel" for the shape of attention, so to speak, allowing deeper (and deeper) relaxation of the tendencies to cling to and resist the flow of experience. Interesting! And the physical movement practices he teaches-- which I suspect are similar to some of what is being discussed on that thread, Ona-- function with a similar principle of tense-release with muscle groups and breath. Very interesting. It's kind of like rocking a car to get it out of the snow or mud.

Ok, I am *very* intrigued. Have you tried this, ona?

-tomo

I've done some of it, for example over the last couple days playing with
warming the sequence of chakras from bottom to top and back down again
with the word OM, then following that with gentle attention to spinal
breathing, or doing the tummo-type breathing exercises where you inhale,
contract a series of muscles, hold the breath and then exhale. I do
find it energizing and pleasant.

I don't tend to pursue it diligently enough to walk around in a bliss
state all day - I've done it for a few hours, or experimented here and
there to see how intense I can make it, but I can't find the motivation
to bother maintaining it beyond that. But it is interesting to play
around with. I suspect if I keep fiddling with this stuff it will
require less attention, and that's interesting. I don't need more than
five hours sleep any more when I'm doing even a small amount of these
practices once a day.

When I did a little of this stuff last year I found it increased the
natural energy stuff that was happening by itself just from my
meditation practice. In that case it sometimes got a little
uncomfortable, leaving me with headaches or distractedness. But it
passes after a while, once the "blockages" have sorted themselves out, and
then the results range from pleasant to ecstatic, depending on how much
effort you want to put into it.

Thanks for the link, Tomo.

that's really handy. I've looked on youtube but the quality and content is very hit and miss. ditto on itunes/podcasts