Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 Will someone please say why being able to do deeper backbends and open up hips more and all the other things you do in yoga is so good for you? I mean, for example, Allan was probably in really good shape because he was so athletic - rock climbing and all that stuff... and it also involves meditation and concentration and mental discipline like yoga, only now he has really tight sholders so he couldn't do backbends - is he better off now becasue he can do backbends? Does that mean he is less healthy than if he had tight sholders and a tight back? Am I better off now because I can get both my feet behind my head in supta kurmasana? I couldn't do that a year ago. Now I can. Big Whoop. WHooptie-doo. I can put my feet behind my head. Sitting in lotus is no problema. The truth is I am quite satisfied with myself for it, but it just a shallow, idle thing to be pleased with it... what are the long-term ramifications of this? Am I more healthy now because I can do this? Is Allan more healthy now because he can do urdva dhanurasana? What is it? What am I working toward?<br>You see, I see bodies everywhere that are fat and stiff and locked in position. To me, it looks like death. But the people in those bodies seem perfectly happy and seem to prefer being that way. The idea of excercise or physical movement is like anathema to them. Some of them don't seem sick at all, just fat and stiff. So what's the deal? <br><br>FBL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 FBL,<br><br>Thanks for your thought provoking post! I'm no expert, but here are my thoughts:<br><br>We can both abuse and disuse our bodies. I originally came to yoga because of abuse of mine. I was a runner for about 30 years. At one time I went 2 years without missing a day. Ran marathons and averaged about 5 mi/day during that 2-yr period. I could barely walk up and down stairs, because I was so stiff and my knees were sore. I think that qualifies as abuse. Yoga allowed me to regain a healthy body. I have given up running entirely because it interferes with padmasana (and vice versa). I've read, recently, that yoga restores our bodies to their natural flexibility and (balanced) strength. Watching my 2yr old granddaughter drives that home. Perhaps Alan's tight shoulders and back were not abuse. <br><br>Disuse seems to be different. Last week a friend and I were talking about some of our former coworkers who were dying. We were trying to figure out what age people who don't take care of themselves (Over eat, over drink, & underexercize) start to fall apart. I think many of them were comfortable in their oversized, stiff bodies, because they couldn't remember any different or figured it was just a normal aging process.<br><br>So the bottom line for me - yoga may make the body healthy so that we may minimize our physical limitations in order to transend them. It's not absolutely necessary to minimize physical limitations as many people with disabilities can teach us. But, making our bodies healthy can be very good especially since it appears to part of the yogic path.<br><br>Namaste,<br><br>Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 FBL<br><br>One virtue of flexibility is that prana flows more easily. The tighter one is anywhere, less prana flows in that area.<br><br>As you know, flexibility means that ligaments have been kept pliable thus heading off all manner of physcial problems -- aches and pains in the head, neck, shoulders, arms and back -- not to mention the sheer joy of being able to move, lift, dance and run or the benefit to the internal organs from performing those asanas that lead to flexibility.<br><br>But, your question seems to be whether there is an additional benefit from doing the more extreme asanas other than flexibility, physical health, mental health and maintenance of the chakra-nadi system. One can indeed question whether the time spent, say in advancing beyond Level 3 or 4 could be better spent in developing the sattvic guna by spending more time in samyama on more esoteric and transcendental factors or even on one's application of the yamas. <br><br>Those fat and stiff people you mentioned who seem happy and have no inclination to exercise, just have a dominant tamas guna that inclines them to be easy-going and slow, even lethargic and resistant to change. They may be as happy as pigs in mud but spiritually they are still pigs in mud. But, hey, santosha is one of the niyamas too. And who cares how the journey is as long as you are on the right path and don't spend too much time in the inn.<br><br>Spiritually, the endeavour should always be to move first beyond tamas, then beyond rajas, and even beyond sattva. How one does that and what what rate depends on their karmic constitution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 What good & interesting questions.<br><br>>Is Allan more healthy now because he can do urdva dhanurasana?<br>Er, yes. It certainly feels like it.<br><br>I'm probably not as strong & fit in some limited ways - being able to walk uphill quickly carrying a big pack, being able pull hard on small fingerholds, etc etc - as I was when I was 25. (Although even if I was still climbing I probably still wouldn't be, because I'm not 25 any more) Now instead I can do headstands and urdhva dhanurasana and (nearly, real soon now) jump back without my feet touching the floor and as you so rightly say, big deal. So what?<br><br>From a purely physical point of view, I think astanga yoga is healthier because it's more balanced. Other activities let you play to your strengths and avoid your weaknesses. In climbing I was always better at things that required technique and a cool head, and intimidated by steep stuff that called for brute force. So I kind of believed that I could climb up to a certain degree of difficulty - and I could, but only if the climb in question was difficult in one particular way and not in others. I made sure my regular climbing partners were guys who were better at the steep stuff, so that we could generally count on being able to get each other out of situations one way or another. The analogy with people who kid themselves about their progress in yoga because they can do a few carefully chosen "difficult" asanas should be obvious. In primary series there's no hiding place - everybody probably finds things in it when they start that are easier and fun, and things that seem impossible and ridiculous, but if you choose to stick with it you have to work at it all every day, including the impossible & ridiculous bits. And, to quote something you quoted a while ago:<br><br>"the places in the practice that are not comfortable for you or that are less enjoyable and that you tend to avoid are probably the areas that, when practiced faithfully, will bring the most growth and benefit." <br><br>(continued) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 FBL,<br><br>Thanks for your thought provoking post! I'm no expert, but here are my thoughts:<br><br>We can both abuse and disuse our bodies. I originally came to yoga because of abuse of mine. I was a runner for about 30 years. At one time I went 2 years without missing a day. Ran marathons and averaged about 5 mi/day during that 2-yr period. I could barely walk up and down stairs, because I was so stiff and my knees were sore. I think that qualifies as abuse. Yoga allowed me to regain a healthy body. I have given up running entirely because it interferes with padmasana (and vice versa). I've read, recently, that yoga restores our bodies to their natural flexibility and (balanced) strength. Watching my 2yr old granddaughter drives that home. Perhaps Alan's tight shoulders and back were not abuse. <br><br>Disuse seems to be different. Last week a friend and I were talking about some of our former coworkers who were dying. We were trying to figure out what age people who don't take care of themselves (Over eat, over drink, & under exercise) start to fall apart. I think many of them were comfortable in their oversized, stiff bodies, because they couldn't remember any different or figured it was just a normal aging process. Those people might be amazed how much better they would feel if they regained their physical health.<br><br>So the bottom line for me - yoga may make the body healthy so that we may minimize our physical limitations in order to transcend them. It's not absolutely necessary to minimize physical limitations as many people with disabilities can teach us. But, making our bodies healthy can be very good especially since it appears to part of the yogic path.<br><br>Namaste,<br><br>Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2001 Report Share Posted June 11, 2001 Like you and the others replying, I'm another who chose to focus on this yoga for my body's sake -- all those other forms of "exercise" I enjoyed in my youth weren't as pleasurable or possible as I approached 40.<br><br>But what I got from FBL's post were the questions: "how much, and why?" <br><br>I have no idea if there are any health benefits beyond 1st and 2nd series. I believe KPJ said as much, that the lion's share of the benefits are to be found in 1st...if I'm wrong about that, or if anyone knows the exact quote, please correct me on this.<br><br>Practicing this yoga is an integral part of my life, part of the larger practice of Yoga that's made up other many other parts I'm currently stumbling and bumbling through: pranayama, meditation, prayer (help me find my car keys), some service to others, intellectual nourishment (HBO), "relationships." <br><br>These are all separate part of my life, yet integral..l like that word integral as it's used by Ken Wilber in describing his approach to spirituality (what a word, wish there was a better one).<br><br>Anyway, one of the things I like about this astanga vinyasa yoga is the challenge. Just to be able to do what you couldn't do yesterday is somehow enlivening in itself. I dig it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2001 Report Share Posted June 12, 2001 "Practicing yoga for the sake of one's health, a firm body, or enjoyment is not the right approach. Only the purification of the body, sense organs, and mind, and the dedication of all actions and deeds to the Almighty is the true way."<br>Sri K. Pattabhi Jois<br>Yoga Mala pg.38 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2001 Report Share Posted June 12, 2001 "What am I working toward?"<br><br>But of course you (and everybody else here) know the answer to this question: enlightenment. Right? Asana is just preparation. So the fat and stiff people don't seem sick; do they seem enlightened? (Why am I writing this to you who obviously must know the answer to your own question? Sorry for my impudence.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2001 Report Share Posted June 12, 2001 Enlightenment? What's that, really? Maybe it just means that one learns to change the working of one's brain so that the neural circuits responsible for making the distinction between 'me' and 'the world' go silent. How much of my life should I use for trying to achieve this neat trick? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2001 Report Share Posted June 12, 2001 funky you're so bad.<br>Actually you hit the nail on the head with the happiness thing. I am justgoing to call it joyous contentedness. Yes - those chubby happy chicks have got IT! Now if we cultivate the contendedness they have we may be happy ...longer and maybe more comfortably. That's about it.<br><br>(see #)<br><br>And have you noticed how much more happy and well-adjusted the children of *chubby happy women are. And generally how nice their husbands are?<br><br>*chubby here being a metaphor for any physical flaw a person may feel they have themselves. <br><br>#But then if we were content would we be doing ashtanga? No baby, we're SEARCHING.<br><br>Does anyone remember the song "fat bottom girls...you make the rocking world go round" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2001 Report Share Posted June 12, 2001 Even if neurologists someday manage to demonstrate that samadhi has a physical basis, that need not lessen it's value for us, especially if we keep in mind that samadhi (or the various forms of ecstatic mystical experience) is oriented to things beyond itself.<br><br>Godfreydev once pointed out on this board that samadhi itself is not the goal of yoga; instead, continuance in samadhi is supposed to lead to liberation (I guess through the undoing of samskaric conditioning).<br><br>Or from a western point of view, ecstatic experiences serve to deepen relationships: between the mystic and God, and between the mystic and others (the quality of the latter type of relationship being also a visible guage of the authenticity of the former), pretty much in the way that sex goes beyond orgasmic ecstasy, cementing a marriage and making a family.<br><br>Peace and Good,<br>Homer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 13, 2001 Report Share Posted June 13, 2001 >>ecstatic experiences serve to deepen relationships: between the mystic and God, and between the mystic and others (the quality of the latter type of relationship being also a visible guage of the authenticity of the former)<br><br>... hmm. Tricky one. I agree with you. However, if you take relationships "between the mystic and others" to refer mainly to immediate family, then there are a lot of pretty major counter-examples: Buddha's abandonment of his wife and child; Jesus not having same; Gandhi by some accounts not the world's best family man either; any Roman Catholic mystic of the last thousand years or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 13, 2001 Report Share Posted June 13, 2001 No, by "others" I meant other people in general. The reference to family was in connection with sex, which I mentioned only as an analogy to mystical ecstacsy:<br><br>Just as (in the western view) sex cements the spousal realtionship, so mystical experience deepens realationships too. These relationships may be directly wiht God (something I have very little conscious awareness of, I'm afraid) or they could be with God as present in others. By "the qaulity of the latter type of relationship being a visible gauge of the authenticity of the former" I had in mind that notion that we can't genuinely love God if we don't love other people.<br><br>Sorry, I guess I was trying too hard to be concise. My only point was that from a variety of worldviews, yogasutra as well as monotheistic, samadhi-like experiences have a value betyond themselves: thus their sacred character is not lost if we discover that they are explainable in terms of the workings of the brain.<br><br>Homer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 14, 2001 Report Share Posted June 14, 2001 "How much of my life should I use for trying to achieve this neat trick? "<br><br>your entire life.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 14, 2001 Report Share Posted June 14, 2001 ". I think many of them were comfortable in their oversized, stiff bodies, because they couldn't remember any different or figured it was just a normal aging process."<br><br>absolutely right on...most people accept an overweight and stiff body as a natural part of the aging process. it ain't necessarily true. You see so many older yoga practictioners prove the falseness of this and it is so inspiring. Personally, I think yoga is the fountain of youth although I'm well aware that it is not the ultimate aim of the practice just a really great benefit. Also, you get so adapted to living in a stiff body, smokers body, alcoholic body, malnourished body or whatever for years on end that you have to experience the opposite to become aware of what a prisoner you've been to certain things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 14, 2001 Report Share Posted June 14, 2001 <<your entire life.... >><br><br>That makes sense only if one believes that 'enlightement' is something more that an attainable state of mind. If it is 'just' a very good state of mind, why should we be myopic and devote our _entire_ lives for chasing just that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 14, 2001 Report Share Posted June 14, 2001 "You see, I see bodies everywhere that are fat and stiff and locked in position. To me, it looks like death. But the people in those bodies seem perfectly happy and seem to prefer being that way. The idea of excercise or physical movement is like anathema to them. Some of them don't seem sick at all, just fat and stiff. So what's the deal? "<br><br>I think you've answered your own question. You are right these average people are basically content with life as is, business as usual. But the yogi is not normal. He/she seeks complete liberation on every level -- physical, psychological, spiritual. So actually that knot in the back of the neck is representative of something bigger. Don't you think all that opening in the body causes a corresponding opening in the mind? My personal experience is an affirmative. I just wander if buddha, jesus or krishna carried any i mean ANY tension in their physical bodies... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 "You see, I see bodies everywhere that are fat and stiff and locked in position. To me, it looks like death. But the people in those bodies seem perfectly happy and seem to prefer being that way. The idea of excercise or physical movement is like anathema to them. Some of them don't seem sick at all, just fat and stiff. So what's the deal? "<br><br>Y'know, it used to bother me that I was so much more beautiful and handsome than almost everyone else in the world...LOL sorry, but that's what the above statement and many of the responses to it seem to mean, to me. "I'm beautiful, you're beautiful, how can those fat people live that way?"<br>Actually, I used to be fat. No, I became officially obese at the beginning of my athletic endeavors. (I took the BMI and BMR)<br>I'm still overweight, but no longer obese and take it from me, OW people will not change the way they look until they get good and ready. Some of them will never change and can't change, because that's their mission from God, y'see?<br>Don't act like you don't know how it is, just because you're what the world calls beautiful and we aren't. Don't put on airs and try to disguise it as pity or sympathy, because you're not fooling anyone, probably not even yourselves. I'm changing my life because it's right for me, I've held out my hands to my friends, but they won't or can't climb that mountain with me and I understand. I love them and I never fail to defend them either verbally or physically, when some self-satisfied fitness fanatic makes them feel like they don't belong or have no right to show themselves in public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 Thank you! I thought I was the only one that was put out by all that crap. The whole Samoan (sp) nation of people would kick all our asses if they heard that kinda chat..LOL!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 16, 2001 Report Share Posted June 16, 2001 There is no basis for connecting flexibility in the physical body with pranic flow in the astral body. Might work for the Easter Bunny, but the rest of us do not converse regularly with him.<br><br>And -- please -- cease using pop pseudoyoga nonsense to condemn fat people to a neo-caste system of your own imagining.<br><br>Your overall intolerance sickens me.<br><br>Kiambo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 17, 2001 Report Share Posted June 17, 2001 I must agree with topazjay. I used to be really overweight and my parents have tried for YEARS to motivate me to lose weight. (I'm almost 21 right now) So, they started giving me "pep talks" in 4th grade (even though in 4th grade, I wasn't really OW, I was pudgy). I tried a few times, with no avail, to lose weight. But, this October, I threw myself into Ashtanga and since then I've lost almost 100 pounds now (technically, I've lost 75). Although I still don't look like a supermodel, I'm now a size 12 (or 10, depending on the brand) and I did that all by myself. Not with anyone elses motivation. My parents didn't really view yoga as something "real". It was just something I did 3 times a week. Then they saw me when i came home from school. Hmmm...that was interesting. Priceless looks. So anyway, people who are overweight, don't necessarily have to lose weight. Some of them just fall into it and happen to lose weight through something they innocently pick up. I, too, have friends who are overweight--and although it frustrates me to see them not do anything about it, I can't do it for them. (okay, there is one that really pisses me off because whenever my other friend and I ask her to go anywhere with us, she's too tired to walk to the car...that is just lazy) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 That's outstanding, what a great success story for what this yoga can do.<br><br>I've lost around 40lbs myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 "They may be as happy as pigs in mud but spiritually they are still pigs in mud."<br>Hmmmmm...Baba Neem Karoli, Ammachi, Yogananda, and other spiritual giants of our time were rather corpulent and pigs in the mud they certainly were not. What if you attain the karma to have to work out your realization in an overweight body in your next life? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 18, 2001 Report Share Posted June 18, 2001 Vivekananda also was as wide as he was tall. Pictures of Lord Siva in meditation show a beefy healthiness with zero muscle definition. The mania for fashionable abdominal cuts will fade in an instant, along with the yoga hucksters who guarantee them. Affection for the true giants of yoga will last forever. "Pigs in mud" indeed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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