The Fundamentals of Stress Management, as a topic, is one that can be covered simply in three steps:

1. Slow to Moderate Movements (Asanas, or yoga postures)
2. Breath Control & Mindfulness (Pranayama & Withdrawal of the Senses)
3. Meditation (Withdrawal of the Senses and Concentration)

We will cover them one by one.

Symptoms of Stress

Many people come to us asking about how to relieve stress or to tell us that their lives have become unmanageable for one reason or another. The feedback they have begun to get from their friends and family is that they are stressed out- or not treating people with their accustomed manner.

They may have any number of accompanying physical symptoms of this as well; these range from anger, anxiety attacks, and elevated heart rate to pinched nerves, pain in various parts of the body, etc. They also may have a difficulty in digestion, inability to concentrate, difficulty sleeping, sensitivity to light or noise, short temper during driving, or a need to always have some form of stimulus going in the background- like music or TV- sometimes even during sleep.

Slow to Moderate Movements

By moving slowly and with attention, like the tree sloth above :-), accompanied by keen breath awareness, one begins to solve the puzzle of stress. In a way, you trick the mind from it’s normal jumpy nature into concentrating on small details of movements and moving toward an ability to match up the inhale and exhale of the breath with those movements.

By connecting the slow/moderate movements to the breath, one can then begin to really observe the breath and it’s relationship to muscular tension. It’s often surprising to people to note how much tension they can observe in muscles that they weren’t even aware of. As practice continues, the extra effort that seems to be made constantly in unfamiliar ranges of motion slowly disappears.

Often people find themselves sweating quite a bit more than they imagine for moving so slowly, and a clearer picture of how much extra effort it takes to hold so much tension in the body.



At the start, one’s challenge is to learn one’s limits and realize where extra tension lay in the body. Additionally, there is often pain caused by the extra tension, and so one must be careful to not be ambitious about how many postures or how far one can move in them. It’s best to not look around overly, but rather to keep one’s attention focused on one’s own body and breathing.



Stress is taken away by forcing the movements to become much more deliberate and gradually the connection to the breath can come. This tends to have an effect on the stress level by raising the energy level. This happens initially because tension inhibits the natural balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to emphasize the sympathetic. Since all muscles come in pairs, one muscle’s controlling nerves are meant to relax while the other contracts. Stress makes tension exist in muscles even when it’s appropriate for them to be relaxing, so the body fights itself, using extra energy in each movement.



Breath Control and Mindfulness
While breathing and mindfulness are a part of slowing down movements, when we have learned how to move and the basics of the postures, this stage take real significance.


You will know you have reached this part of your yoga practice because one will no longer be able to do any yoga postures without really integrating and aligning the breath. Your yoga teacher will be telling you about what to do, and you will begin to really feel your way around the pose, as the breath begins to guide the movements, instead of moving somehow in spite of it!

It is at this point, the practical effect of pranayama (breath control exercises) is to erode one’s stress by making one focus clearly on the control of the flywheel of emotional life. As a man breathes, so he conducts his affairs.

Mindfulness is a part where one then begins to take the subtle nature of one’s breath awareness and apply it to your emotional states during postures. Sometimes we want to push to learn a pose, or move too fast. We will have a subconscious reaction to holding a challenging pose and begin to work through those. Those with back stiffness or issues can often feel difficulty holding sitting forward bend or half-spinal twist. Since yoga is about balance, one begins to gain an understanding of the parts of your personal yoga practice that don’t contribute to holding the balance in postures, then finally inside one’s mind and emotional being.



Meditation
All of the previous activities in yoga are necessarily having an end in meditation. Meditation is the final culmination of all other ethical, movement, breathing, sense withdrawal and concentration activities found in intermediate to advanced yoga practice.



Far from merely sitting without doing anything; meditation is action in inaction. According to the Bhagavad Gita:
In verse 18 of Chapter 4, Lord Krishna proceeds to explain action and inaction. He says ­“ One who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, is intelligent among men, and he is in the transcendental position, although engaged in all sorts of activities.”

This principle can also be called, according to Taoism: Wu Wei. Doing without doing.



Many are the benefits of meditation, and in all areas of life. Even though initially, meditation as we think of it isn’t really meditation in a technical sense. Meditation in a technical sense in an unbroken flow of thought toward the silent infinite.

We CAN gradually calm our thoughts down, however, through physical silence. When we first start to sit in silence, our task is to calm down our body and with this will follow a sense of calm in the mental realm as well. We follow this, as above, with breath awareness and gradually slowing the breath to an imperceptible rhythm. Like the lake above, without wind, the mind will not arise with waves- and the mind of the lake will be as calm and beautiful to experience as the photo promises.

With repeated practice, one can call upon the depth of the lake’s treasure at a moment’s notice and relieve stresses, even in the most difficult situations. This is all trainable and possible to everyone. You can see a good demonstration here of meditation:


We hope you can join us in learning, as we have, of this depth awaiting you in yoga.

Om,
DurgaDas and Leila

Tags: Breath, Breathing, Stress Management, Stress Relief, Yoga