CHAPTER 1
Getting Started
When I first heard about yoga, I was probably like most of the Western population. A part of me dwelled on the image of half-naked yogis folding themselves into human pretzels, another part conjured up serene thoughts of modern-day swamis, incense, and a kind of New Age spirituality. Through experience and discovery I quickly realized that neither of these images was correct. Yoga may be a centuries-old Eastern philosophy and art practiced by a variety of cultures, but it is also the finest, most adaptable form of combined physical and mental refreshment available today.
No longer confined to the realm of the mystic, yoga is shedding its exotic image and becoming recognized as a practical, powerful system of mind/body exercise appropriate for any age, any time frame. Medical establishments are using yoga to help prevent heart disease and treat injuries. Conservative businesses are integrating yoga into their daily course of events to manage stress and improve workplace productivity. Fitness instructors and mental health experts are advocating yoga as the practice of choice for busy business people who want to calm their minds, regenerate their bodies, and manage their lives with greater ease and joy. Yoga has taken its rightful place at the helm of today's busy and sophisticated lifestyle. And for good reason — it works.
After sitting in front of a computer all day, you probably feel like your neck and shoulders could use some unwinding. Your mind could use a "mental reprieve," because those ten-minute coffee breaks just don't seem to de-stress you anymore. And your back is so knotted that even a hot bath won't ease the ache. With just fifteen minutes of dedication a day, you'll learn how yoga can help even the tightest neck and pinching lower back feel good again. The practice is explained in simple, no-nonsense terms, and illustrated with two posture sequences that take into account your many roles and packed schedule. A variety of suggestions is included to keep your motivation high and help you maintain your practice schedule. At the end of the book, you'll find a list of excellent reading material for further study and a table of commonly asked questions with associated page references. Gurus, swamis, and the pop counterculture aside, yoga will help you increase your energy and revive your body's youthful flexibility like no other form of exercise.
What's So Great About Yoga?
Despite its Indian roots, yoga is basically a non-denominational, holistic practice, made-to-order for the busy Western persona. Yoga is a Sanskrit term, roughly meaning "yoke, or union." Its definition implies its purpose: to unite the mind, body, and spirit to enhance health and improve the overall quality of life. This book is about the most recognizable form of yoga practice, Hatha yoga. Hatha means "sun" and "moon," suggesting that the healthy union of opposites — in this case, the mind and body — lead to strength, vitality, and peace of mind. Hatha yoga is concerned less with the quantity of physical movement than its quality. By regularly combining precise, sustained stretches with mental focus and deep breathing, you quiet your mind and refresh your body. This in turn frees your spirit, making you not only healthier and more relaxed, but also genuinely happier.
It Quiets Your Mind
Yoga has long been known to calm and quiet the mind, yet few people understand the physiological basis for this effect. Fear and its surrogate, anxiety, release hormones that perpetuate stress reactions such as shallow breathing, muscle tension, dilated pupils, and other aspects of the fight-or-flight response. These physiological responses in turn reinforce the catalyst, fear, perpetuating a cycle of stress. Yoga is a powerful counteragent to this troublesome buildup because it breaks the cycle, helping your busy mind to quiet its agitation. This emotionally stabilizing influence is making yoga the core of stress-management programs offered throughout the United States.
In a way, yoga is a style of meditation. Meditation is a mental discipline of focusing the mind upon one thing or activity, the purpose of which is to develop a transcendent sense of peace and a mindful clarity of thought. Meditation teaches you how to efficiently think and act without the burden of reactive thinking. People who meditate regularly are light of heart, not oppressed by the crescendo of self-doubt that plagues Western culture. They listen to their thoughts but aren't trapped by them. They become objective, creative thinkers with excellent concentration skills. As you quiet your mind through yoga postures, you're exercising a form of this mental discipline.
It Refreshes Your Body
Contrary to a common notion that yoga simply twists your body into obscure, meaningless shapes, its combination of physical postures, breathing methods, and awareness practices are exquisitely natural. They harmonize with your body's unique structure and fundamental physical capabilities. Yoga practitioners will tell you that they experience greatly increased mental and physical energy after a posture sequence.
Physical distress is often the result of improper movement, or lack of it. We're a society of people who sit improperly, move incorrectly, and perform potentially damaging repetitive tasks, all of which create muscular imbalances in our bodies. Our bodies are crying out for alignment. In classic yoga lore, this alignment facilitates the smooth flow of vital life energy (known as "prana" or "chi") through the muscles, bones, and soft tissues. Using postures and sustained stretches, yoga skillfully and methodically aligns your body, bringing your skeleton, muscles, and internal organs back into balance.
Yoga's deep breathing practices combat fatigue, lower blood pressure, and can even ward off asthma attacks. The stretching and strengthening exercises relieve muscle strains, prevent injuries, lubricate joints, and increase endurance. In essence, yoga is the ultimate body tune-up.
As Jean Couch says in her excellent book, The Runner's Yoga Book, "I want you to know that if you follow a yoga program you will probably feel much better, better in a way that's hard to describe, because of the skeletal extension and muscular flexibility you will gain. Actually, I can think of a way to describe how you probably will feel: younger."
It Frees Your Spirit
Treasures such as peace of mind, joy, and contentment are often difficult to come by in today's harried world. Moments of potential quiet are inundated with appointments, responsibilities, and incessant mental chatter. Busy people long for the freedom that accompanies inner peace, but they don't know how to slow down, relax, and listen to the still, small voice inside.
Yoga helps ease your mind and soothe your body so that the connection to inner peace can be re-established. In this connection, your creative spirit can take flight into new ideas and expressions. You discover a calmness and emotional grace that lasts far longer than the length of the sequence. Mental chatter begins to subside as you explore the posture sequences. Your spirit is no longer hampered by physical and mental exhaustion or neurotic fear. You feel serene, clear-headed, and light-hearted.
The Busy Person's Advantage
You may believe that your busy lifestyle is a disadvantage when it comes to starting a practice such as yoga, but a full schedule of activity is actually helpful because it cultivates characteristics necessary to the development and maintenance of a vital yoga practice. These characteristics include curiosity, flexibility, and stamina.
1. Curiosity: Busy people tend to have a keen sense of curiosity. They ask questions and explore new ways to improve their efficiency. This is important because, as a yoga student, you are literally exploring your own mind and body. Your curiosity will spark a natural interest in yoga that will keep you from becoming complacent or bored with your practice.
2. Flexibility: Your full life demands an ability to shift gears and adapt. The world is constantly changing and, whether you like it or not, you have to be responsive and ready. This mental flexibility means that you can integrate and apply the positive character traits that yoga develops. Mental flexibility can also be directed into creative scheduling, helping you fit yoga into an already packed agenda.
3. Stamina: Keeping up a job, a social life, a family, and other responsibilities requires strength and endurance. If you can do all that, you can practice yoga. Because of your stamina and resilience, you won't give up on yoga even if the time constraints of your busy routine make practice difficult.
In addition to having all the right qualities for starting a yoga practice, you also generate enough activity in your life to give you reason to continue yoga. The more activity in your world, the more opportunity you have to observe the benefits of yoga. With these benefits serving as motivation, you're much more likely to continue practicing.
What About Stress?
On a small scale, stress stimulates activity and improves concentration. This is one reason why college students often wait until the last minute to study for exams. The stress galvanizes their efforts so they can concentrate more easily.
Like college students, busy people tend to rely on stress to propel them through the gauntlet of distractions they confront every day. Unfortunately, requiring stress to get you going is like becoming ill to get attention. The end result is habitual sickness. Life becomes an endless series of dramas. Special events are forgotten. Weekdays and weekends fuse into one long jumble of responsibilities. Chronically stressed-out people believe that tomorrow is for living; today is for surviving.
Chronic mental stress not only affects your outlook on life, it also damages your body. Research has shown that it weakens your immune system, squeezes your coronary arteries, increases your blood pressure, shortens your breathing, and unduly tightens your muscles. It is a precursor to physical illness, particularly if you already have a family history of certain ailments like cancer or heart disease.
Cardiac specialists, psychoneuroimmunologists (people who study the relationship between the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system) and other medical and scientific professionals are now proving what yogis have known for generations: stretching the body, breathing deeply, oxygenating the brain, and lengthening the skeleton all lead to clear thinking, physical health, and stress reduction. With regular practice, yoga develops an emotional equanimity that increases your stress tolerance. People who've been practicing yoga say things like, "I just don't get upset like I used to. It takes a lot more to set me off."
You'll never have a stress-free life. Stress is an irrevocable part of the human equation. However, you can learn to cope with stress effectively and keep it from building a permanent residence in your mind and body. Yoga, the contemporary 2000-year-old practice, will teach you how.
Finding the Correct Style
Yoga styles vary from flowing, moving forms that demand certain strength levels, to long, slow processes of holding postures steady for periods of time. While all styles are beneficial, the Yoga for Busy People method employs a style that's perfect for busy people because of its focus on precision and accuracy. It helps you glean the most value from every movement in every posture.
Yoga's birthplace is India. As such, it was originally developed for Indian bodies accustomed to postures and activities very different from those we encounter in North America. The Western lifestyle doesn't make our bodies strong and flexible in the same way that Indian bodies are strong and flexible. Hence, at first, you may need props such as yoga mats, pillows, belts, and chairs to help you achieve the correct alignment. This is natural, expected, and doesn't mean yoga is wrong for you.
To know if a yoga style is proper for you, tune into your body and listen to its responses. If you are new to yoga, if your body is inflexible or overweight, or if you have physical limitations, give yourself time to mature into the poses. Ask yourself how you feel after a yoga session. Do you feel refreshed, invigorated, alive? If not, then you may need to slow down or investigate another exercise form.
Because every body is different, you may need to personalize your sequence once you understand the correct execution of the movements and their ultimate aims. Further study and attention to how your body feels will tell you whether or not certain postures are appropriate for you. However, you'll never know what yoga can do for you unless you try it for at least three weeks. If you're consistent in your practice, three weeks of effort will tell you if yoga can make a difference in your life. I'm betting that it can, and that you'll begin to feel comfortable with this newfound exercise program after a few short practice sessions.
The Yoga for Busy People Method
The Yoga for Busy People (YBP) method addresses issues that busy people often contend with — little time, little physical flexibility, and a crowded mind. It offers a logical order of progression, leaving enough room for variety but not straying far from the desired result — maximum value in a minimal amount of time. Here is a brief overview of YBP's three simple steps:
1. Center your attention: Centering refines your concentration and quiets your mind. Centering cultivates a keen awareness of what your body is doing. It teaches your mind to focus, attunes your attention to the body's alignment and breathing rhythm, and intensifies the value of any posture. As the first part of any yoga session, centering prepares you mentally and emotionally for your postures.
2. Perform a posture: When you execute a yoga posture or a series of postures as described in Chapters 2 and 4 of this book, you'll be concentrating on a specific part of your body, while refreshing your body overall. Each posture aligns, tones, lengthens, and nourishes your muscles and internal organs. It's more beneficial to correctly execute a single posture than to thoughtlessly run through a series of postures.
3. Release the experience: Releasing involves accepting what you've done and letting go of the experience. Releasing reinforces the value of the practice, enhancing its long-term effect. With an upbeat, positive release, you're also less likely to procrastinate your next practice session.
Properly executed, these three steps turn any stretch, posture, or series of postures into an experience which is body-invigorating, stress-reducing, and mind-refreshing. Overlooking a step may weaken the value of the practice, turning it into just another stretching session.
As you experience these three steps, remember that yoga is done with a combination of flow and accuracy. You don't simply bounce into a pose. You consciously move every part of your being into it. This attention to detail makes you intensely aware of all your body's moving parts — their exquisite precision, their strengths, their frailties. You learn how to re-inhabit your body instead of ignoring or dismissing it. You develop a childlike partnership with your body that is both freeing and energy producing.
How Long Should You Practice?
If you're wondering how to motivate yourself to fit yoga into a very short time frame (see Chapters 3 and 4), then you'll probably need to think about scheduling time for it. Ideally, you should practice some form of yoga daily for a minimum of fifteen to twenty minutes, with a couple of thirty-minute sessions each week. (Think of daily yoga as a quick, invigorating mind/body shower.) Of course, asking you to add yet another daily "have-to" to your already overextended schedule may be too much. So if you can't create a regular routine, do yoga whenever you can for as long as you can. Hopefully you can squeeze a minimum of four fifteen-minute practice sessions into a week. The main point is: do it. Do it whenever you think about it. If you only have time for one posture, do one posture. Don't deny yourself the value of a single posture just because you don't have time for a whole sequence. Yoga makes you feel so good that you'll find yourself naturally carving out more time for it.
