The Language of Yoga: Exploring Dimensions of Language and its Relationship to the Study, Practice and Teaching of Yoga ~ by Chrissy Boylan

“Words have the power to destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” ~ The Buddha

In 2005, David Foster Wallace, the iconic writer and author of Infinite Jest, gave a commencement speech at Kenyon University. The speech, titled “This is Water,” opened with an anecdote about two young fish. The fish were swimming around one day when they came across an older fish swimming in the opposite direction. “Morning, boys,” the older fish called to them in passing. “How’s the water?” Some time later, one of the young fish turned to the other and asked, “What the hell is water?!”

That is how I feel about language.

I love language, and have always loved language. Language is how we understand the world and our place in it. And though many overlook language the way fish do water, humans generate and rely on language as automatically and naturally as we draw breath. Can we even think without thought? Maybe. But language is what allows us to know what we think.

Language also suffuses Yoga—from transmitting the sacred teachings of the sutras to learning to ‘find ease’ in a certain asana. This paper will explore three specific ways language impacts and informs the practice and study of Yoga: using language to counteract our brain’s innate negative bias, using the vibrational element of language to heal, and acknowledging the benefit of different styles of writing for studying the sutras. …

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Yoga for the Elementary School Teacher ~ Tami Hill

Elementary school teachers face a special challenge in the work place: children. W.C. Fields is credited as saying “Never work with animals or children”, perhaps alluding to the unpredictability of both. No one knows this better than the teacher that, year after year, balances the needs of a classroom like a circus act spinning plates. Children are unpredictable, funny, loud, precious and demanding, and not necessarily in that order. To teach them requires energy, patience, creativity and understanding... and possibly thousands of other characteristics not mentioned here.

My goal when offering yoga to my elementary school colleagues was two-fold: get instructing experience and share what I was learning (and had learned) about balance in my life. Two words became my mantra, sthira and sukha, and I longed to bring steadiness and ease to the lives of others for whom I worked with and about whom I cared deeply. This project brought to my dearest colleagues just that, sthira and sukha, and I am forever grateful for the experience.

The following collection lists my offerings by month/quarter of the school year. Poses, meditations, ayurvedic supports, mantras, and quotes that formed my hour-long classes every Tuesday afternoon, are gathered here. May they be used in the future to overcome the challenges of teaching by creating balance in the classroom and in life.

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Yoga at Midlife: Insights on Samvega and Healthy Aging ~ by Marjorie Ames

“For those who seek liberation wholeheartedly, realization is near.” (1.21)  ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Hartranft, p. 98)

Yoga at Midlife

One of the many benefits of the increased integration of yoga into modern life is that, along with more people practicing yoga throughout the United States and experiencing the physical and spiritual benefits, health scientists have begun to take notice. For decades, there has been a strong and accepted link between physical activity and health, to include countering the effects of aging. Emerging scientific evidence demonstrates that yoga and meditation practices can slow physical and mental decline – even on a cellular level – and more importantly, contribute to extending health and well-being.

Popular sources as varied as The New York Times and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) are now discussing the results of research into the health benefits of yoga to form recommendations for healthy living. …

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Trauma and Mindful Practices to Relieve Suffering ~ by Sandi Marino

“Go in and in. Be the space between two cells, the vast, resounding silence in which Spirit dwells...
Go in and in and turn away from nothing that you find.”

 –Danna Faulds

Many Yoga masters, therapists, and somatic psychologists believe everything we’ve ever experienced is stored in the body. Even when the memory is repressed, the body remembers. While some people think of trauma as a mental problem or disorder, trauma actually occurs in the body. This trauma may be held somatically, expressed as a chronic aches or pains or a sense of injury. While talk-based therapy serves a critical role in the healing process, it fails to address the ways trauma is held in the body. Yoga addresses the somatic experience through physical movement and restorative action patterns, which is why trauma-sensitive yoga is emerging as an effective adjunct treatment for trauma survivors. …

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Yoga and Salah: Similarities on These Paths to Inner Peace ~ by Jameela Ali Nalukandy

My mat, a place of prayer, of meditation, of reflection, of peace and calm. My home! Watching my mother meditating on her prayer mat opened my eyes to the wonder of both Salah (or Namaz) and Yoga. She sat up tall, seated cross legged, eyes closed and she looked radiant. She appeared so graceful and yet so powerful! I wanted to feel the same peace and power for myself and that moment became the catalyst that spurred me on to the practice of yoga. … The focus in both Yoga and Salah is the connection between mind, body and soul. …

In an age where the war cries of fatwas and bans seem to drown out the rational and peace loving majority there is a need to recognize and highlight that which binds us, that which is the same! By doing so we can perhaps tolerate and even celebrate that which divides us!

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This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on Meditation. But This is Your Brain (Mind and Body) on Transcendental Meditation ~ by Chris Liss

The modern world is filled with a variety of stressors that bombard our brains and bodies. These stressors - diet, especially sugar and caffeine, a noisy or polluted environment, an alarm waking us in the morning or a timer going off to alert us to the next item on our daily agenda, the bicycle horn, or “Bell tower,” “Robot,” or verse of a favorite song telling us we’ve received a text message, traffic, or simply surfing the internet and trying to keep up with all the news that’s “fit to print,” at least electronically - triggers our sympathetic nervous system, our “flight or fight” response. Our sympathetic nervous system is a survival tool, an ancient survival tool that should be used only in “fight or flight” – life-threatening - circumstances. It is a perfect, vital marriage of function between the brain’s amygdala and adrenal glands. It has kept us alive for 500,000 years. So, it works.

We can think we are multi-tasking throughout the day: texting and driving, cooking dinner while helping our children complete their homework, or practicing our yoga while distracted by our agenda for an important meeting with a new client at work. The brain and body suggest otherwise. In fact, try balancing in standing bow pose for a minute while creating a Thanksgiving dinner menu and I bet you fall! Studies have shown that our brains actually do not multi-task, but shift focus from one task to another a micro- second at a time. This results in ineffective work and actually lower productivity. More importantly, our bodies cannot multi-task when it comes to the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” system. It’s either one or the other. The default is the “fight or flight” mechanism, putting tremendous stress on our body and brain, flooding our system with adrenaline and cortisol. Our primordial self wants to survive and this system has been successful for 500,000 years. Why fix something that isn’t broken, right? …

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Accepting Fear: Yoga & Living Fearlessly ~ by Kristine Olmen Healy

This paper is a discussion on fear--the good and the bad. What is fear? How does it positively and negatively affect the human body? How can yoga help you recognize and manage it? Through my research and sharing of my personal story, I hope to answer these questions, as well as help you reconcile your fears, let go of those that are not serving you well, and step out of your “comfort zone.” (Mackler, 2014)

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Yoga for Teens: A Valuable and Enduring Gift ~ by Jill Schroeder

Ever since I began doing yoga eight years ago, I have tried to instill in my daughters an appreciation for their body and an ability to go inside and calm themselves. One of my favorite sayings has been “You can’t control what happens to you in life, but you can control your reaction to it.” I am not sure where I first heard it, but there is something very empowering in that statement, the knowledge that we can in a very real way control how we approach life. In effect, we can create our own happiness. Yoga provides a great opportunity to teach this life lesson, and teenagers are often a receptive audience because they are trying to cope with life’s increasing demands on them.

A regular yoga practice can provide many physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits for teens. Yoga’s focus on the body, mind, and breath awareness helps strengthen muscles and improve flexibility, promotes relaxation and reduces stress, and boosts self-confidence and body awareness, important to a healthy lifestyle. The poses can help loosen teens’ tense muscles from team and aerobic sports, while the meditation and breathing exercises help them focus and calm the mind, promoting further relaxation. (Lyness) Another benefit for teens with yoga is that it is very low cost; besides the mat, no special equipment or clothes are needed, and it can be done anywhere at any time.

Yoga is a useful “life tool” for adolescents, which can help them blossom into their full potential with a healthy body, a calm mind, and a belief in their own intrinsic worth. …

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Eyes on Yoga ~ by Kathleen Stemplinski

… The benefits of eye yoga range from better vision to increased concentration and spiritual insight. In yoga we learn to focus our eyes with precision. We direct our gaze purposely at a drishti which can help direct the energy of the pose. In balances the dristi can keep you keep upright; in twists, it can help you turn further. In general it helps us stay mentally clear. …

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Yoga is for Everyone!!! ~ by Susie Crate

I begin my essay about ‘Yoga is for Everyone!!!’ with a quote from Pema Chodron about why it is important to mediate:

‘People often say, “Meditation is all very well, but what does it have to do with my life?” What it has to do with your life is that perhaps through this simple practice of paying attention—giving loving kindness to your speech and your actions and the movements of your mind—you begin to realize that you’re always standing in the middle of a sacred circle, and that’s your whole life. This room is not the sacred circle. Gampo Alley is not the sacred circle. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’re always in the middle of the universe and the circle is always around you. Everyone who walks up to you has entered that sacred space, and its not an accident. Whatever comes into the space is there to teach you.’ – Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape.

I do this deliberately to emphasize the point that yoga IS meditation and therefore for everyone. If that is not enough to convince you, consider my first deep understanding of exactly how it is that yoga is for everyone. It was during the 2011- 2012 teacher training year and all of us 200-hour teacher-in-training yogis and yoginis had gathered for a monthly intensive weekend, this month with master teacher Baxter Bell. He opened one of his session by telling us that one of the best yoga practitioners he knew is paralyzed from the neck down. We all exchanged confused glances and Baxter went on to explain that in reality only a very small part of the practice of yoga are the asanas—in fact the asanas are one of eight parts—and they are there to bring into the physical realm the ‘yoking of mind and body,’ the ultimate objective of and literal translation of the word ‘yoga’ from Sanskrit. He went on to say that having a physical body that can master all the poses is not as important as ‘embodying’ the philosophy. Baxter’s story was powerful for me and it changed the way I understood yoga and my role as a teacher and my approach to facilitating anyone who has a desire to learn yoga, even if they are paralyzed from their neck down.

Later that spring we had another master teacher, Tias Little, who also brought more light to the subject. Tias mentioned several times over the course of the intensive weekend that ‘If you can breathe, you can do yoga.’

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