Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

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Milton 1966“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.”

These are the words of a song I sang with my mother as a child and as a Girl Scout – does anyone else remember them?

Friendships show us the love and humanity inside us that is our essence. We discover ourselves through doing things together, talking over current life issues and future goals. New friends give us a fresh chance for discovery and playfulness as we look for their unique qualities and bounce those qualities against our own. Old friends are actually part of us already and, in some ways, they might know us better than we know ourselves. As friends, we underscore and amplify each other’s values and uniqueness; we stand in each other’s truth. We are there for each other in celebrations and in rough times, giving moral support and delighting in each others’ company.

I recently attended my 50th high school reunion for the women of my graduating class, and was moved to see these women again after so long. Out of 42 women, 23 of us attended – a pretty good percentage I’d say. I had not really kept in touch with any of them except one who is my first cousin. One came from Panama, one from Italy, one from Australia, and the rest from around the USA.   Even though so many years had passed, there was a strong and positive link between us, probably because of the formative experiences of those teenage years. Many professions are represented: doctors, lawyers, actors and acting teachers, psychotherapists, schoolteachers for all ages, musicians, visual artists. But I think I’m the only yoga teacher in the bunch. As I talked with many of them, I saw through their eyes and careers how the past 50 years have shaped us from our schoolgirl selves. It was impressive.

Walking around the school and remembering stories, I felt like I was almost able to see myself again at that age. Those experiences are still inside me, having partly shaped who I am today, for better and for worse. And these women were part of it.

Then I think of new friends I’ve made – through family connections, yoga connections and just living in a crowded city. They are neighbors, students, in-laws and colleagues. One of them said to me recently: “We’ve worked together but I don’t really know much about you – let’s have lunch and talk.” Connections grow from curiosity – what is common between us? What is different and how might I grow from that? Friendship grows from spending time together, listening, and opening the inner door to new understandings of the marvelous diversity and complexity of human nature. It’s a risk sometimes, but a risk worth taking. And then silver can turn to gold.

Photo:  My High School Reunion, Class of ‘66

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What is Yoga Therapy and Who’s Qualified to Offer It?

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Ellen Saltonstall, AnatomyAll yoga is inherently therapeutic, so what exactly is yoga therapy as distinct from yoga in general? I’ve heard many great teachers define it in different ways. To me, what makes the distinction is in the goal and the education/experience of the teacher.

A yoga teacher guides students in the practices of asana, pranayama, meditation, study of the philosophical teachings, chanting, and community service, in order to uplift their lives. Therapy will be part of it, because yoga improves our health.

A yoga therapist uses the tools of yoga to help people relieve pain and suffering in the body-mind-spirit. We use yoga techniques toward a particular goal. We do not diagnose. We work with the person, not the disease. We educate with the intention of relieving suffering.

Yoga opens the pathway for people to understand themselves more deeply, and to experience the flow of prana (life force) in the body-mind-spirit more clearly and powerfully. It is the prana that heals, not the therapist. Any good yoga teacher helps students to enhance the flow of prana. We teach people how to move intelligently, how to align the body well so that the natural healing power of the body-mind-spirit can do its work. A person’s own vitality will do the healing. We provide the support, the environment and the techniques, and that’s where the training comes in. We need to know about the underlying conditions to teach effectively. The teacher-student relationship is part of the therapy, but that’s also true in medicine and psychology, so we can’t claim to utilize more than other modalities.

So truly, every yoga teacher uses yoga as a therapeutic tool, and many students will expect their teacher to do just that. It’s inevitable, because that’s the way yoga works. Before every class, a student tells me about their latest ache or pain and wants my advice. Students put us into the role of healer, whether we want that or not. But we must practice ahimsa (non-harming), and avoid pretending that we know more than we do.

It matters how we present ourselves and how we pursue ongoing education. For myself, I continue to do research and learn from good teachers in related fields. Basic training to lead a yoga class is one thing. Training to be able to help people with medical ailments requires much more training in topics such as anatomy, physiology, psychology, and the characteristics of common medical conditions. We also need to have at least some knowledge of the current medical treatments for a range of common conditions. It’s a larger skill set, a larger toolbox, and one we must use with discretion.

Ellen Saltonstall Massage DemoWhere can one get this training? Yoga therapy training programs exist around the world, and more will come every year. IAYT has set preliminary standards for training, and this is a good start. We can use the training of psychotherapists, physical therapists and physicians as a model for what’s needed. I advocate a period of formal training (at least two years after completing 500 hours of basic yoga teacher training), followed by a period of supervision/internship, similar to the training of social workers and medical doctors (at least two years). The formal training could be a combination of online and in-person courses, with competency tests. Perhaps those yoga teachers who are also accredited physicians or psychologists could help to design the curriculums and tests based on what has worked in their fields. And these programs should be administered by people who know about yoga. I’d hate to see the training of yoga therapists being legislated by people who know little or nothing about yoga (like university administrators, for instance).

What about licensing? Even though the issue of licensing has many dangers, I think it’s the only way for yoga to be fully recognized as an effective health care modality. I would like to see different sub-specialties, like yoga for structural/orthopedic issues, for mental health issues, for disease management (cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis etc), for elder care, for children, and for military personnel and veterans. We don’t all need to be expert at everything.

Right now this kind of training is self-directed, relying on the motivation, persistence, curiosity and integrity of each teacher to seek the training they need for what they want to offer. But potential students have no reliable way to evaluate a yoga therapist.

We’re in an important transition now as a professional field. Yoga has proven its worth in helping to heal or manage dozens of medical conditions, and more evidence will come to light every year(1). We need to be ready to competently serve the multitudes of people seeking the benefits that yoga has to offer.

Footnote:
1. Dr.Timothy McCall’s website has an ongoing list of studies showing the healing benefits of yoga.

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Visiting the Hindu Temples of South India: The Source of Yoga

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Ellen Saltonstal, Meenakshi Amman Temple

Ellen Saltonstall, Meenakshi Amman Temple, Madurai, India

When I returned from a recent trip to South India, my students asked,  “What was the spiritual significance of your trip?”  It’s a good question, worthy of ongoing contemplation. We visited 18 temples, ranging from a small outdoor one (just a platform under a tree), to the enormous Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, which covers 45 acres.  It was definitely a pilgrimage for me to visit the birthplace of yoga and to feel its strong presence in 21st century life.  In particular, we spent a fabulous day at the Nataraj Temple in Chidambaram, which I’ll describe later.

I’ve been a meditator and student of yoga for over 40 years. If you think yoga is just an exercise class, you’re missing out on a huge range of practices and traditions. I began meditating in 1974 within the non-dual Shaivite branch of Hindu yoga, that is, centering on Shiva, one of the Hindu deities. Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Minakshi, Ganesh – these deities and others are all representatives of cosmic functions and human qualities.  Hinduism is generous in saying that you can align with any of the deities that appeals to you, since they all represent aspects of the highest truth. Each temple we visited had dozens of depictions of these deities in sandstone, granite, wood, and paintings.  They become like familiar friends after a very short time.

The underlying teaching of Hindu non-dual philosophy: Everything is comprised of the same consciousness in different forms. The highest reality, the Absolute, is not separate from the concrete reality that we experience in daily life – it is interwoven through it. In other words, all life is sacred, and we can connect with that sacredness in our everyday world.

My experiences in the temples we visited made that very clear. In the active temples, devotees were streaming in and out, participating fully in whatever was going on. Rituals that have been performed for centuries are maintained and offered for anyone to witness and participate in.  Far from being just about the performance of a task, the authenticity of these rituals is palpable.

Plan_of_Meenakshi_Amman_Temple_Madurai_India Ellen Saltonstall Yoga

Plan of Meenakshi Amman Temple Madurai, India.

I love that Hindu temples are designed to mirror the layers of the human body. Put your western anatomical thinking aside for the moment, and consider this: We each are made of five concentric sheaths, or layers of being, called koshas. The outermost layer is the sheath of food, the physical body. Next is the more subtle sheath of breath, followed by the still more subtle sheath of thinking, followed by the sheath of understanding. The most subtle and central core sheath is of bliss, in which we revel in our own being in the most profound way.  We practice yoga to traverse gradually and systematically through these koshas.

The temples are constructed in concentric courtyards to represent these sheaths. The first entrance and courtyard have the bustle of regular life, but as you get closer to the central area, there’s a strong feeling of vibrating stillness, like what we can experience in meditation.   The inner sanctum is often dark and partially hidden, pulling us in like a magnet.

The Nataraj Temple in Chidambaram was the main focus of my pilgrimage; I had heard about it for years, and it was thrilling to be there. Its history goes back to the second century BCE and, among Shiva devotees, it is the pinnacle of sacred places.

Chidambaram Ellen Saltonstall Yoga

At Chidambaram Temple. (clockwise, left to right): Ellen and family; Fire ceremony; Nataraj.

Nataraj is the name given to the form of Shiva dancing the cosmos into creation. He has four arms and two legs, and each limb is performing a cosmic function: creation, sustenance, destruction, concealment, and revelation.  The temple’s architecture has correspondences to the human body: the golden roof over the inner sanctum is made of the same number of tiles as the number of breaths we take every day. The central shrine can be entered from two sides, symbolizing the flow of blood in and out of the heart. The outer walls of the temple have nine entrances, corresponding to the orifices of the human body.  The iconography on the major towers (gopurams) depicts the 108 dance forms of Bharanatyam.  Honoring the sanctity of the human body is built right into the temple.

This temple, covering 35 acres of land, is cared for by a democratic and hereditary group of 300-400 priests who perform all the rituals and attend to visitors to the temple. We had one priest as our host, a charismatic man with a dynamic energy and huge heart. He guided us through our day there with great generosity and compassion. We watched many ceremonies, and I was particularly mesmerized by the chanting of mantras and sacred texts. Sometimes I could recognize words and could chant along, and other times I just bathed in the sound.  It felt both very exotic and also very familiar, as if I had been here before.  It also felt nourishing at a very deep level. After each ritual, the priest would say: “Happy?” And I was. The chanting had a purifying effect, burning away the dross of mundane distractions and worries to reveal a wellspring of underlying joy.  What a gift!  Seeing the practices of yoga in their historical context of these south Indian temples gave me a potent reminder of the power and diversity of this path, for which I’m profoundly grateful.

Join me on March 5 & 6 for the Bodymind Ballwork Workshop where we use we use rubber balls of varying sizes and textures (as small as a walnut and as big as a melon) to support, massage and stretch localized areas of the body. Experience a positive mental and physical shift!

Look for Anatomy for Yoga Teachers and Students and Bodymind Ballwork, two new titles by Ellen Saltonstall to be published in 2016.

_______

Photo credits:
Plan of Meenakshi Amman Temple, Madurai, India : https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/Meenakshi_Amman_Temple
Image of Naturaj figurine: http://www.chidambaramnataraja.org
All other photos by Ellen Saltonstall

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Release Shoulder Tension with Bodymind Ballwork

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This is one of the best stress-busters I know of.  Who doesn’t have tightness in the upper shoulders?   Working on a computer, carrying things or children, worrying, getting inadequate sleep, and having less-than-ideal posture—these all contribute to chronic contraction in the trapezius, a superficial muscle spanning your entire upper back and neck.  When you let go of tension here, with the help of balls, it does a huge service to your state of mind—not to mention helping to dissolve headaches and neck tension.

You’ll need two balls about the size of tennis balls (2-3” diameter), a place to lie on the floor, and a yoga block, if you have one. You might also want a bolster to rest your hands on, if your shoulders are tight, and a yoga mat for padding.

Lie on your back with the bolster above your head on the floor and the block near you. Take a moment to settle yourself, releasing unnecessary tension as much as possible while breathing fully. Notice how your shoulders feel.

Then place the balls under your upper shoulders, one on each side, in the area between the base of your neck and your shoulder blade. This is the upper trapezius, as well as some other deeper muscles. Bring your arms up in front of you and bend your elbows, pointing them toward the ceiling. This position brings more weight onto the balls and keeps them in place. You can rest your hands on your forehead or the floor behind your head.

There are two movements, each done very slowly and with awareness and care.  Notice as many details of sensation as you can. Don’t rush.  The benefit comes from the balls’ pressure on your tissues, the slow movement, and your attention.

Ballwork-shoulders_1500
1) Move your arms slowly up and down toward the ceiling, in a movement called protraction of the shoulder blades, which move away from the spine. Take special care to release your arms back to your rest position, feeling them settle onto the balls.  Do this for several minutes.

 

IMG_02592) Extend your arms overhead, resting your hands on the bolster or on the floor. Settle in this new position, and feel the difference in sensation where the balls are. If they have slipped out of place, just reach back with one hand to reposition them.

Now move your shoulders and upper back slowly and carefully off to one side, shifting sideward rather than turning. Keep your weight on both balls if you can. It’s a small movement, just enough to work into the muscles laterally.  Return to center and repeat to the other side, and continue like this as long as you like.

Try this variation: place the block under your pelvis and feel how this changes the balls’ contact with your trapezius muscle. Then repeat #2, slowly moving from side to side to massage the muscle. If you find a trigger point, you can stay on that spot for a longer time, or go back and forth over it.  Be careful to keep your movements slow and steady.

After 5-10 minutes, remove the balls and feel your shoulders as you lie flat on the floor. Is there a change? What do you feel?  This is the beginning of the trapezius technique, which you can read more about in my upcoming book, Bodymind Ballwork.

If you have questions or want to tell me how it feels, please write me via the contact page. Look for another blog coming soon with essentials for shoulder alignment and strengthening.

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