WE ARE NOT MACHINES

“I believe we are, each of us, connected to every person and everything on this Earth, that we are in fact one divine organism having an infinite spiritual existence.”

— Jane Catherine Lotter, from her self-authored obituary

Published on July 28, Ms. Lotter's unsentimental yet touching death notice  soon went viral. She expressed belief in a cosmic interdependency, which may be considered esoteric philosophy. But truly, it is irrevocable fact.

Her words, along with something I heard recently at a yoga festival, has me pondering why we cling to the mechanistic view when acknowledging and honoring the holistic would serve us far better.

We isolate, label, and categorize parts and pieces of parts. We use our labels to focus on fragments rather than striving to comprehend context. Too often, we raise the flag of individualism without taking into account that, as Ms. Lotter wrote, we are in this together. It’s not just feel good kumbaya. It’s fundamental fact.

During a yoga class taught by Jules Mitchell at the Flagstaff Yoga Festival,  she talked about the drawbacks of thinking about the body in parts. Without a doubt, labeling body parts is useful for understanding physiology.  It also can lead to simplistic, counterproductive, or foolish thinking.  “If a teacher instructs you to fire up your quad muscles, you probably focus on  doing that,” she said. “But really, you need to be aware that action is going to affect your entire body.”

We fall into that thinking around food as well. Researchers are beginning to develop an understanding of the complex interplay of hundreds of nutrients found in whole foods. Scientific studies confirm that natural, whole foods deliver a nutritional wallop that can’t be replicated by consuming isolated nutrients – even in concentrated doses. Taking the carotene out of the carrot and consuming it as a supplement, for example, has the potential to do damage. The magic happens by ingesting the whole carrot.

Work highlights our mechanistic tendencies as well. For more than a century, work has been organized in ways that discount the whole and make crucial interdependencies almost invisible. People are assigned roles and responsibilities. They answer to a supervisor, who answers to a manager, who answers to a VP, who answers to a CEO. People define work as completing tasks in a way that pleases the boss rather than understanding how their contributions are essential to the success of whole undertaking. And the undertaking exists in a marketplace that has its own interdependencies.

A muscle requires the brain, lungs, ligaments, tendons, bones and more to function.

The carrot seed needs soil, water, and sunshine to become a vegetable rich in healthy nutrients.

If workers, teams and departments base decisions only on what is best for them without honoring  interdependencies, the enterprise will fail to thrive.

We are, each of us, connected to every person and everything on this earth.

HOW DO YOU EAT AN ELEPHANT?

Practicing tapas helps you create healthy habits.

Seven minutes and thirty seconds.

During his talk at the Southwest Institute for Healing Arts in May, master yogi Mark Whitwell asked us to commit. Do a simple, short yoga flow routine every single day for three months, he said. “If you give it seven minutes a day actually, naturally and not obsessively, I promise it will change your life.” As we drove home from the event that Tuesday night, Jamie and I agreed we both would do it.

For years, I’ve wanted to establish a committed, daily physical yoga practice. Don’t get me wrong. I practice frequently and have for many years. But when it came to a daily home practice, the Terrible Triplets — laziness, procrastination, and rationalization — had a powerful pull.  I’d wake up with the kind of intention the devil loves to pave with, and the Triplet’s mellifluous voices would sing out a sweet persuasion. “Look at your calendar! The To-Do list! What a busy woman you are. Practicing right now will take too long. You can do it later. Tonight. Tomorrow!”

Seven minutes and thirty seconds a day seemed manageable, and would be a perfect precursor to my meditation practice. Honoring my commitment to Mark Whitwell would unplug me from the power of the Terrible Triplets and give me a double-dip return — enhancing my asana routine and the opportunity to practice tapas.

In Sanskrit, tapas translates as heat. It is the practice of discipline or zeal. For the things i like and need to do anyway, such as working, writing, and reading, tapas comes easier. In other areas of my life, lack of tapas creates self-imposed barriers to personal growth and developing good habits.

My daily 7.5 minutes is reminding me that “tapas is as tapas does.”  It requires getting past the discomfort caused by friction created by  “going against the grain” of my tendencies to succumb to procrastination and rationalization. This friction generates the heat of tapas, burning off habits that don’t serve you. The heat generates strength and stability, and the Terrible Triplets wither in the face of such fire.

Since Mark’s talk, we have practiced every day for more than two months, except for a couple of days lost to travel and illness. Now when I get on the mat, the seven minutes and 30 seconds often expands. Seduced by the meditative rhythm of breath connected to movement, I find myself adding a few lateral stretches here, a balancing pose or some extra twists there — whatever my body is calling for. I get lost in the ocean sounds of my breath, the delicious dance of muscle and bone. Meditation flows  naturally at the end of my practice. When I open my eyes, 20 or 30 minutes have passed. This makes me smile.

Fueled by tapas, I am eating an elephant — one bite at a time. Take that, Terrible Triplets.

PITCHING PRANAYAMA IN THE MAJORS

On the pitcher’s mound, you prepare to hurl a fastball that could change the trajectory of the baseball game. Thousands of fans look on, hoping for a strikeout (or a home run). Millions more are watching on TV. How do you focus in the face of such pressure?

Matt Harvey takes a mindful breath before throwing the ball. 

Matt Harvey, a rookie pitcher with the NY Mets, takes a mindful breath.  

Harvey is starting for the National League in the July 16 All-Star Game at Citi Field, the Mets home stadium. During every game, before every pitch, he practices pranayama. He describes it to  Kevin Kernan in this New York Post story:

“The last thing you want to do is get the ball back and not think about what you are doing and just go. Then you find yourself rushing, you don’t take enough time, your muscles are tense. You breathe, visualize the pitch, then you can let go and execute to the best of your ability….I get the sign and take my breath. When you have that breath you have that time to say, ‘OK, fastball away.’ ”

Such breathing techniques are called pranayama, which is the fourth of eight limbs of yoga. Prana means energy or life force, and ayama means control. Learning to harness your breath mindfully can create focus, calm, and sanity — no matter what your work is.

We will add Matt Harvey to our collection of stories about the power of mindful breathing. In Yoga Wisdom at Work we wrote about Steve, development officer at a major medical university, who uses pranayama to establish deep connections and understanding in his conversations. Steve inhales and exhales deeply before he speaks to anyone and says doing this is “positively disarming.”

A police officer —who also teaches yoga — told us pranayama is a life-saving practice. She means it literally. In one case, her gun jammed during a shoot-out. Panic set in as she watched “my mind running away from me.” She ducked behind a wall for a few seconds of mindful breathing, which gave her time to take control of her mind, fix her weapon and continue the chase.

Developing a pranayama practice is as simple as one, two, three:

1. Recognize that breathing has four parts: Inhale. The space before exhale. Exhale. The space before inhale.
2. Attend to all four parts. Inhale for three counts, pause for three counts, exhale for three counts, pause for three counts. (Any count that feels natural to you works. The point is to develop a cadence that can be repeated without interruption.)
3. Doing this for even a minute or two helps snaps your mind to attention. When your mind wanders, come back to the breathing technique.

By identifying aspects of your work life that are stressful, make you anxious, or take a toll on your sanity, they can become prompts for practicing pranayama. Smiling while silently sayingwords such as “calm” or “peace” or “contentment” is even more powerful — it trains your brain to view the situation differently.

If you try this at work, we’d love to hear what changes for you. If you have a story about breathing at work, please share.

YOGA STAYS IN SCHOOL

Judge John S. Meyer’s ruling allowing California’s Encinitas Union School District to continue its yoga instruction program elicited a long, luscious sigh of relief. What a shame it would have been to see children denied the physical and mental benefits of a yoga practice (many documented by scientific research) because of a few parents’ fears.

A lawsuit filed by the National Center for Law and Policy on behalf of Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock, whose children attend one of EUSD's nine schools, contended that yoga is a religious practice that violates the separation of church and state. The Center is a Christianity-based nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting and promoting religious freedom, the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and parental rights.

The district's yoga program is funded by the Jois Foundation, which promotes a fast-paced, demanding form of physical yoga called ashtanga. Judge Meyer said that even though yoga is an ancient practice with roots in Hinduism, there's "nothing religious" about EUSD’s curriculum, which emphasizes respect, proper breathing and posture.

Exposing children (or anyone)  to the physical practice of yoga is not the same as indoctrination, any more than a module about Karl Marx in a World History class is intended to create communists.  Ultimately, the meaning of any practice is rooted in intention. A "Sun Salutation" is nothing more than a series of body moves and stretches unless the person doing it chooses to see the sun as a deity and the movements a form of worship.  Like beauty, worship is in the eye of the beholder, which is why the Bible, Koran and other ancient texts are viewed as literature or philosophy by some, as sacred ancient text by others, and by still others as the literal word of God. 

Given Judge Meyer’s ruling, parents who hoped to stop the district’s yoga instruction are understandably disappointed. Religion engenders passion, and beliefs are deeply held.

Parents could, if they chose, use their disappointment as a springboard to rich conversations with their children about what yoga means to them and their families. It could become a means of reinforcing values that call for worshiping only God as defined by their religion — without depriving anyone else of the myriad benefits that yoga offers.

As we wrote in  Yoga Wisdom at Work,  we know plenty of dedicated yoga practitioners who are connected to in varying ways. Their views on yoga practice are dependent on their intentions. Some view it as little more than physical exercise, and others as a non-religious spiritual practice. We also know many people who see yoga as a practice that enhances an complements deeply held religious values. In his book  The Promise of Love, Sex and Intimacy: How a Simple Breathing Practice will Enrich Your Life Forever, master yogi Mark Whitwell emphasizes the need for people to understand that yoga is not religion, and that yoga practice is a valuable tool to help "fuel the passion" for one's religious beliefs.

In our experience, yoga is a neutral practice that can be shaped — or twisted — by those doing the practicing. Many yoga scholars have emphasized this egalitarian aspect of yoga, including Sri K. P. Pattabhi Jois, for whom the Jois Foundation is named. "Yoga is a way of life and philosophy. It can be practiced by anyone with an inclination to undertake it, for yoga belongs to humanity as a whole. It is not the property of any one group or any one individual, but can be followed by any and all, in any corner of the globe, regardless of class, creed, or religion." 

If by definition the practice is open to anyone, regardless of religious beliefs, it is an odd way to brand a "religion" and a ridiculously ineffective way to disseminate dogma. We agree that public schools should not be in the business of promoting religion, which is why we are perfectly comfortable with yoga as part of any school's wellness program.