When was the last time you asked the question, “Are we not all titans and giants, imprisoned in hell”? If it’s been a while, or maybe never, after reading this entry you may want to ask it every day upon waking. Before I get into discussing more physically demanding musculoskeletal postures that are sure to invigorate your neurofascia, I’d like to take a moment to work backwards from what is the most important part of why you got into this whole yoga business, Corpse Pose. In terms of classification and level, it is all about perspective. As a matter of fact, your perspective will either take you on an amazing journey in Corpse Pose, or it will not move you at all, maybe even have you taking a short nap. In other words, it is you, your perspective, your personal involvement, the things that are internal and in the realm of nonshareability among others that will make or break this experience, leaving you fully responsible for what you get out of it. If it doesn’t work for you, it’s not the yoga that didn’t work, but it was you who didn’t show up to the party; depending on your perspective, therefore, lying there like a corpse after your self-imposed intense physical and mental stresses can be very easy if you understand that you are now uniting your mind, heart, and body in a scared trinity that project spirituality as they are overlaid, or it can be very advanced and difficult as you struggle with wondering, questioning, being lost, missing a connection to yourself, and only being able to view it externally as you lie there on your back and breathe. Perspective is what we have as our secret weapon to change absolutely nothing in the physical world around us, the external, yet by changing the internal, suddenly everything changes and the entire existence of all things from our earliest memories to the most now moment is different, in an instant.

Photo courtesy of BonesBob

What is working on your body in lying there as if you are dead, as you can imagine, is gravity. Ah, the ever mysterious gravity, that scientists still cannot grasp fully as a concept in context of our world from the very large down to the infinitesimally small. But you can lay there and ponder it with your mental focus, because, alas, you are not dead, yet. To reiterate the driving force that is your vehicle through your liberating perspective, whatever “gymnastic” demands your immediately prior asanas make on your body in terms of strength, flexibility, and balance, your new challenge here is to release all of the tension from every part of your body AND your mind; if you get this one wrong, you may fool others from a distance, but you’ll know if you are trying to fool yourself or you have been successful in letting go and thereby coming into the full embrace of not just this or that, but all that is. Atheists beware, this may be the most dangerous pose for you, unless of course you are interested in transformation and change. From my personal experience and perspective, the religion in which I was brought up had its own form of Corpse Pose, except you were expected to do it on your knees with your back unsupported, and with your hands folded in prayer in front of your heart. I don’t know about you, but I found that a lot more difficult.

So, what challenges do you face, with your little mind that is definitely going to be flitting about like a little moth in an almost empty closet, looking for that one forgotten wool scarf on a shelf in a corner way in the back, in the dark? You may have a problem with fully relaxing because you think too much about your body. The first thing you will struggle with is that what looks like you lying there symmetrically with your legs and arms straight, palms up, feet falling outward, may not feel symmetrical as your curvy parts of the backside of your body make contact with the floor. Just surrender to the fact that what you may be feeling proprioceptively (the information being relayed to your central nervous system about your environment) may not initially line up with the fact that your body is indeed positioned just right. This way you are now ready to achieve a deep state of emotional and physical relaxation. If you have body issues, meaning you have difficulty or inability to accept your body as it is, this will be the primary reason stopping your progress. You need to accept your body as it is, and not how you wish it to be.

Savasana

You will be breathing, concentrating on your breath, meditating on your back as you release and forget about your body once each and every part of it has been accounted for and systematically relaxed. You’ll know you are there when you get to that last area of your body and relax it; your mind will search for any remaining areas of the body connected to it that still require relaxation, and in finding none, you will feel both weightless and free, while still being in full participation with gravity as you feel your heavy body sinking into the floor as if it is ever more becoming softer, more accepting of your weight, wanting to get closer to you, one with your body. This deep state of conscious relaxation is different from sleep, so don’t sleep! If you can imagine how you breathe when you sleep, in other words breathing without controlling your breathing, that is your goal. Be fully aware of your breathing while not controlling it. The reason for this is your breath has a natural rhythm, and you have to let it run wild in that rhythm. When you are too aware and control your breathing, you cage it, altering its natural rhythm. Set the breath free and let it run wild, and you yourself will step out of your cage and run wild.

How long should this go on for? I like to generalize it to ten minutes, but I obviously don’t set a timer or look at a clock. You know what ten minutes feels like, so prepare for that. Just like all other asanas, when you know you’ve had enough, you just know. Good indicators that you are ready are experiences of having been fully released from conscious, mundane, egocentric reality for a time frame that naturally makes you want to jump back into life as if you have just been reborn into your body to start new. Your mind will start to nudge you to want to come back into being and have new levels of optimism and enthusiasm for the possibilities offered to you in this life. When the physical relaxation feels complete and complimentary to your physical demands that have come before this time, and the mental and emotional release have peaked and come back to a resting state, all three of these aspects will come to a synergy like three key aspects of yourself resting at the bottom of a deep bowl. Your eyes will naturally want to open; the smile on your face is optional.

I decided to breathe. Breathing helped. A lot. I realized that by not breathing, the heart kept beating and it started to leave like a train that I had just missed at the station. The only way to get on that train was to breathe, but it had to be the right kind of breathing, otherwise it would just be a pathetic uncoordinated and jagged tumbling forward, like tripping with each step and just watching hopelessly as the gap between me and my heartbeat widened. I took a steady and deep breath. This was the answer, the only answer, and it liberated me from the constraints of my memory, my conditioning, my thinking of what time is and was, and it narrowed the gap, synchronizing with my heartbeat, and the extreme pain that I felt in the arc of the breath lessened as soon as it became greater than I ever imagined it would be. Once the relief came I pushed on by straightening my legs more and lengthening them from the hips to the heels and I took another deeper breath and there. It was gone. All of the pain and difficulty and torturous inescapability seemed to have vanished and I had the strength to stay right where I was forever. Forever until the heart would agree to beat no longer. I did it, I found the serenity and immaculate beauty, not to look upon, but to be a component of, experiencing it directly.

This was my private practice today. I didn’t look at any clocks until it was complete, and about an hour had elapsed. There were no sounds, no speaking, no interruptions, no distractions. There were instead the very unavoidable sounds, words, interventions, and adjustments of being fully alive.

What do you do with your eyes? It’s a simple question that can be mind-boggling. How good is your eyesight? Better yet, how good is your vision? Let’s simplify the answers by talking about subjects and objects, two things that have to be present when talking about eyesight, and then let’s turn reality upside-down to get to the core of what vision is, beyond eyesight, beyond matter, beyond the limits and constraints of time and space.

The logical scientific mind is conditioned to think in dualistic terms of subject and object, but for our purposes it is imperative to understand that objects are not determined things, but possibilities for consciousness to choose from, and this unifies subject and object, eliminating duality. This will make more sense later on as we discern what is and is not the consciousness of possibilities. Science must now encompass both the subjective and the objective, whereas the subjective, or private, used to be ignored, exiled from science.

Seeing through previous barriers, something we have all experienced as an A-ha! moment, requires use of your vision, not your eyesight, and it is not constant but rather instantaneous and then fades away. I’d like to talk about learning to maintain that insight for prolonged periods, with the aim of making it last the same way people talk about living mindfully. I refer to this as lidless sight, like an eye that never sleeps and is always watching. If you’ve ever read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or seen the movie adaptations, it is like the Eye of Sauron, which is depicted in an evil light. However, fictional tales aside, a good historical representation based in human civilization is the Eye of Horus. The Left Eye of Horus is the feminine pathway of exploring the human nature of emotions and feeling, both positive and negative, and everything that is not logical. The Right Eye of Horus is the male pathway, the rational and logical. There is a middle eye, the Third Eye of Horus, which is simply life and the source of it all, encompassing all sight across all of time, and this is where we set the stage for what it takes to truly see the world as it is.

Now back to subject and object. Science today is still struggling as a whole to move toward solving all of the paradoxes that have arisen as we ask more questions and have no answers. If you know a little bit about quantum physics or care to learn about the inherent inability we humans have to use quantum physics to explain our reality the way we were able to do with the classical physics of our macroscopic world, you’ll easily stumble upon the brick walls that our materialistic monism has built for us thus far. This means science as we know it is built up on the idea that everything in the universe is made up of matter, and we are now for almost 100 years realizing that this is painting us into a corner, rendering us unable to make sense of questions like why 70% of the universe is made up of something we cannot see or detect, namely dark matter and dark energy, as it is termed. That’s right, I just said that if the universe is made up of matter, which physical science is based on, then matter as we know and perceive it makes up only 30% of what we have seen so far in our observable universe. This is a problem for science.

Forgetting about science’s problem, let’s move on to what you can do as an individual in your own life and with other people’s lives. It turns out that the solution here is the solution to the current big science questions, and may end science as we know it, and maybe even put an end to religion altogether in one fell swoop. If you’ve followed me so far, you’ll really appreciate this: have you been surprised by strange coincidences that seem to point toward communication of some kind between you and another person or a circumstance that brings new possibility and events into your life? I’m sure you have, and instead of discounting this as strange or just possible coincidence, accepting this as the true nature of reality will bring down the barriers of materialist world view that is limiting and based upon memories and ideas of the past. You can actually figure out what it is that you did to create that communication with the constant flow that is not static and brings with it new choices, new possibilities. You can manifest things seemingly out of nothing, which is very easy to do since almost three-quarters of the universe is actually nothing.

To continue with stabilization training, Cobra pose activates the core with the intended purpose of strengthening this system. Keep in mind that core stabilization movements are less about sweeping action and more about sustained contractions of very specific muscles. These core muscles are the transverse abdominis, internal obliques, pelvic floor musculature, transverso spinalis, and multifidis. In stabilization exercises, there are other muscles that need to be activated to prepare for them, and this is done by drawing in the navel and activating the gluteals.

The Floor Prone Cobra, as it is called in ordinary gym-related workout terminology, has variations between exercise and yoga, and we will go over both just as we did with the Two-Leg Floor Bridge, or Two-Legged Table. For this exercise, instead of lying supine, you will lie prone on the floor with arms to the side of the body and palms facing toward the ground. Your arms are straight behind you, not bent in front of you.

Start by drawing in the navel, activating the gluteals, and pinching the shoulder blades together. Pinching the shoulder blades together can be done by lifting the straightened arms off the floor and imagining that the tops of your hands are moving toward each other in an effort to touch behind you. Lift the chest off the floor. Hold this position for 1 to 2 seconds. Slowly return the chest and arms to the ground. It is also important to note that keeping the chin tucked throughout this movement will help to keep the cervical spine stabilized.

The yoga pose is called Bhujangasana, or Cobra Pose. It is intended to work the spine, arms, and legs. This seemingly simple pose with little movement actually involves many complex actions which we can explain further in detail below for those interested in the muscular anatomy of what is happening. To combine the movement with the breath, lying prone with palms on the floor and under your shoulders, follow the previous instructions to begin while pushing up with the arms, but only in the slightest amount, allowing the muscles of the spine to do most of the work; inhale on the upward movement, filling the ribcage with a further expansion of the chest. Time the inhalation with the arc of the motion upward and release with an exhalation and come down. The intricate spinal movement starts at the cervical (head) and one vertebrae at a time comes up off the floor. The hips remain grounded and the belly can slightly rise off the floor. The exhale begins with the lumbar (base) region relaxing to the floor one vertebrae at a time until the chin or forehead comes to rest and there is no longer tension in the spine. The breathing pattern can be reversed if belly breathing restricts thoracic extension and rib cage expansion. Concentrate on the serpent energy moving up the spine from the top of the hips to the nostrils, and be the present force of your awakening.

The joint actions involved are sacrum counternutation, hip extension, internal rotation, adduction, knee extension, ankle plantarflexion, scapula neutral, glenohumeral joint external rotation, elbow extension, and forearm pronation along with spine extension.

The entire spinal extensor group of muscles work concentrically to create spine extension. There is a synergistic action in the serratus posterior superior which overlays the erectors, assisting chest expansion. The rectus abdominis and obliques work eccentrically, preventing overmobilization of the lumbar spine. The arms are engaged through various muscles: the infraspinatus, teres minor, serratus anterior, posterior deltoids, triceps, pronator teres, and pronator quadratus. The legs are required through numerous actions to keep the joints in alignment: the hamstrings extend the hips and maintain adduction and internal rotation. External rotation of the legs is a movement that must be avoided, along with abduction. The muscles responsible for extending the hips are the adductor magnus and gluteus maximus while the knees are extended by the vastus lateralis, medialis, and intermedius.

To keep breathing uninhibited, focus must be on the deep back muscles, the underlying core, instead of the larger and more superficial muscles that affect the scapulae and rib cage. Shoulders don’t elevate, but the spine is lifted. Elbows should not flare out and forearms should stay parallel with each other with the push of the arms.

Like Krishna dancing on the serpents’ heads to subdue them, so are you using your ego energy and then releasing it. By grasping your ego energy and releasing it you become the powerful enlightened manifestation of yourself that cannot be trapped or defeated. By awakening the serpent power within you, you free yourself from all suffering of this world and can take the first step of your journey in this life.

If you hired a physical trainer and you were in need of core stabilization training, one of the exercises you would do is called a Two-Leg Floor Bridge. To prepare, you would lie supine (on your back) on the floor with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor, with toes shoulder-width apart and pointing straight ahead. Your arms would be placed to the side pointing toward your feet, with your palms down. As with all stabilization exercises, the region just below the navel stays drawn in throughout the duration of the exercise, ensuring the intrinsic core stabilizers are staying activated. The movement starts then with drawing the navel in, and activating the gluteals, or buttock muscles. Lift the pelvis off the floor until the knees, hips, and shoulders are in line. Be sure not to raise the hips too far up off the floor and hyperextend the lower back, as this places excessive stress to the lumbar spine. Slowly lower the pelvis to the floor, and repeat. The timing for this movement is 6-20 seconds under sustained contraction, since these are slow-twitch, type I muscle fibers we are activating in this type of training. Sound like a lot of information? It isn’t actually, because there are a lot of gaps left in full comprehension of this movement that yoga fills in nicely, and I will explain how.

The associated yoga pose is called Two-Legged Table, or Dwi Pada Pitham, and it is classified as a basic supine vinyasa, meaning it is a dynamic movement that is coordinated with the inhalation and exhalation. Notice that in the previous description, there was no talk of breathing, and as it turns out this would be a very substantial omission to gaining the benefits of doing this movement in the most fulfilling way.

Lifting your hips is typically done with an inhalation and lowering with an exhalation. This simple practice can be used to release tension from the spine and breathing structures, while also supporting balance actions for  similar poses that go beyond this movement. Breathing, concentrating on the breath, and being aware of the breath is our connection to all that is beyond and within us, and here in this movement contextualized in yoga we can take a simple gym warm-up exercise and actually live in present harmony with the Cosmic Intelligence. For example, bhaya kumbhaka can be referenced in this movement, also called the negative breath or relaxing breath, and it refers to the time after exhalation and before inhalation, the time when the lungs have little or no air. After the inhalation and lifting of the spine, an exhalation and retention of the fully exhaled lungs on the lowing creates a natural lifting of the pelvic floor and abdominal contents toward the zone of lowered pressure in the thoracic cavity. The three bhandas, or interior body locks, can be very easily activated using this method of lowering on the external breath retention, and the subsequent inhalation can create a dramatic downward release of the pelvic floor and a noticeable sense of relaxation in this often tense region.

By combining knowledge and experience in this and other movements or poses from both perspectives of training in the gym for specific physical goals and training in the yoga class or your home for personal enrichment, fulfillment, and connection with the deepest sense of existence, you are gaining the most benefit from what can otherwise be flat and without purpose. Instead of doing gym warm-ups that can seem insignificant, you are paying close attention to who you are and what you are capable of. Instead of blindly following yoga poses with a notion of faith, while hoping for an understanding of spirituality, you are fully informed to what the point of it all is. That is Metal Yoga.

The science of Yoga from the perspective of Yoga goes far beyond what we here in the West require as proof to feel logical understanding, trust, and security to become involved. Our “required proof” lies in the realm of exercise science, stuff we can make sense of on a practical level way before the profound concepts beyond and including humanity are accepted, less understood. Because I am aware of this resistance and general incomprehensibility in our culture, I will begin to describe yoga in terms of exercise science and explain the aspect of meditation as a mental health maintenance protocol.

I’d like to start with the word Posture. To most people, yoga means putting yourself in different poses, or moving through a series of poses. We all have an idea of what poor posture is, and definitively poor posture and repetitive movements (even sitting at a computer on a daily basis like I’m doing now to type this is repetitive stress) create dysfunction within the body. The body treats this as an injury, initiating a repair process. Adhesions form and can become permanent structural changes in soft tissue along lines of stress with an inelastic collagen matrix. Here’s where it gets scary: muscle fibers can be prevented from moving properly because these stress-induced inelastic remodeled soft tissues act as roadblocks in the neuromuscular system. This is the worst case scenario of why good posture is so important, and every physical yoga posture is one that has been scientifically designed in the yoga world, just as in the exercise science world flexibility training restores the normal extensibility of the entire soft tissue complex and every stretching technique is one that has been scientifically designed in the sports medicine world.

Next time, we’ll match and compare yoga postures with stretching techniques. It is important to note that yoga is not a stretching technique, but within the similarities the common denominator is the human body. By explaining the benefits of stretching techniques, we will explain in a “modern” way the positive effects of yoga in its smallest sense, or the physical benefits of a regular practice.

Have you ever heard others say that yoga makes you look 10 to 20 years younger than most people your age? I’ve met many people that practice yoga regularly, attending classes, even teaching classes, and they’ve all pretty much looked exactly their age. Some of them definitely looked good, vibrant, and some even very good for their age, but they looked their age. My point is that just doing yoga isn’t going to bring comprehensive feelings, experiences, and outward results akin to a magical fountain of youth. What will keep you as strong and healthy as you can be without fail are proper nutrition, proper sleep and rest, proper amounts of physical activity, and mental stability. This is yoga, and you never have to roll out a sticky mat and flow through a vinyasa to experience this.

You can research what is proper for you in each of the above categories on your own and I don’t intend to give strict opinions here on what works for me. I can give nondiscriminatory advice, however, that will benefit most people, and this advice can be compared to your current personal assessment to coerce a decision to take action.

Be very specific about what you will and will not eat. Even if you are healthy and fit, attempt to limit or diminish the amount of sugar you allow to enter your body. For most of human existence on earth sugar has been present in very controlled and limited amounts compared to the sugar explosion of the last century in modern civilization. Sugar and sugar-related compounds have spawned, through overuse, many illnesses, and you must show great restraint from what you may have gotten used to. To keep this simple and realistic, don’t worry too much about honey, agave nectar, and naturally occurring sugars in fruits. Exclude all other sugars, which would include “added sugars” in products, sucrose, fructose, dextrose, maltose, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, processed sugar, evaporated cane juice (a fancy phrase that means sugar), and especially products that have high sugar quantity measured in grams per serving. Sugar is a carbohydrate, and although we need carbohydrates for our bodies to function properly and perform well under stress, also be very aware of how many carbohydrates you consume throughout the day and during each meal. If your daily intake of protein and carbohydrates meets a general proportion weighted more toward proteins, you have a better chance of not ingesting more carbohydrates than your body needs to create energy, thereby avoiding high blood sugar levels and the possibility of storing fat subcutaneously. For a more detailed explanation of typical protein requirements and food sources for obtaining favorable amounts of proteins to proportion your diet, see my January 27, 2011 entry entitled The Argument for Vegetarianism, Part 2.

Drink water instead of sweetened beverages, vigilantly. Don’t sweeten your tea or coffee. If you drink natural juices, water them down 4:1. These simple steps are often the most difficult for people looking for a way to either get healthier, become more athletic, get more energy, and simply lose unwanted weight, size, and body fat. Remember that calories burned should equal calories ingested. Whatever your fitness level, if there is an imbalance between calories burned and calories ingested, your body will immediately begin to change by either thinning out or bulking up. It is up to your choice of nutrition whether that thin or bulk refers to fat or muscle.

Combining discerning yet nourishing nutrition with challenging frequent physical activity will keep your body looking its best. The individuals successfully embracing youthfulness as the attitude that instinctually begins life, while repeating objective assessment to maintain a level of actualization of youth through care of the physical body are the people living the fountain of youth, looking, feeling and acting years and decades younger as they age with the rest of the world. It’s a personal choice for most people, and if you aren’t experiencing it, you may be solely to blame.

The next step takes us outside of the mind to bridge the gap between the intention and the enacted result. This is assessment, and the ideal is objectivity. This is a difficult and shaky bridge for many to traverse because it is fraught with manifestations of personal subjectivity that lead to destructive criticism, lack of confidence, pessimism, self-doubt, and ego battles. If you truly understand that one simple sentence you just read, then you can move on triumphantly over this bridge and watch the bountiful rewards of positive assessment grow to their ultimate potential in this step.

Assessment is a basic, dry, no-nonsense procedure that is ongoing and unweighted. If it isn’t that, it is ineffective. If your two first steps, attitude and assessment, or just one of them becomes inefficient or ineffective, you will be one of the majority of people that call themselves old and try to corral others into talking and agreeing about their collective oldness. So keep it simple, keep it unweighted with thoughts and judgements that are sabotage, and do the following with optimistic joy.

Forget your past history about your physical existence in this body. If you have historical precedents about  what you can’t do and will never be, throw them out now. These will weigh you down and are loot bags for the pity party. When you look at yourself in the mirror, take note of how much space your body occupies from the bones that hold you up to the outer layer of skin that you can see. Make realistic notes for yourself about what the next step is from here so that when you get to that next step and see yourself in the mirror you will be poised for making a new note about the next step after that. These incremental steps should be able to be met by you in timeframes no shorter than a week and no longer than 3-4 weeks. Any other steps that fall outside of this range are either unrealistic or impossible to keep track of and will prove ineffectual and a form of self-sabotage.

Your physical form in this world is a highly malleable one. There are more soft parts on our bodies than hard parts, and all the soft parts can change shape and can be under your control. If you’ve never taken control over your soft parts or never considered it as a power you have, now is the time.

Understand that you are what you eat. If you go about this with an eating disorder your body will look disorderly. After assessment you can now empower the direct results by being discerning with the quality of materials you use to build your structure, to create your physical representation of the art within. In the next part of this series, we will discuss being the gatekeeper of the entryway that makes or breaks your physical body.

First of all, the fountain of youth is not exclusively in yoga, so don’t think I’m going to say that as long as you do your practice diligently every morning as the sun rises you will witness a miracle occur. But the concepts discussed here are encompassed in yoga, so some form of yoga practice is better than none, even if it is just to meditate on these perceptions. And if you’re familiar with yoga, staying young begins with attachment, or non-attachment to a notion of youth. Once you define too specifically what youth means to you and then hold on to it, you will be in a constant struggle in opposition to your notions instead of being young.

Perspective is what either drives things or brings them to a halt. Remember that if you live to be 100 years old, you will die young, not old. Keep that as a goal, to die young. If you smoke, don’t exercise, eat bad food, and have a hard time with your physical body, that is one way to die old. Another is to be in good physical condition but not know how to smile, be overly pessimistic, harbor anger and resentment toward others, and not to love yourself. Keep in mind that even our known universe is young, and thousands of generations of human lives later it will still be young. Life is short because we don’t have an opportunity to get old unless we impose it upon ourselves.

With the right perspective, you can spring into life with attitude. Examine your attitude. How do you consider yourself in this regard? Do you think of yourself as young? Do you think of yourself as getting more beautiful and vibrant with the passing of every day, taking in the accumulated experiences of love and beauty in this world?

If that is what you do, then you are on the right track. I don’t know about all of you, but the most common things I hear people actually say out loud is that they are getting old, that they aren’t young anymore, they aren’t getting any younger. They convince themselves that this is true, give up and don’t think and act for themselves in this regard, and then say it out loud to convince others to try to bring everyone down into their self-deprecating view of themselves so they aren’t alone in their sorrow. Some of them even make a conscious deal with themselves, sacrificing their youth for some task or tasks in life, thinking that youth is some kind of bargaining chip or currency to spend in the shopping spree of life.

Do you think of yourself as old? Do you feel disconnected from your youth and the joys you experienced in your youth? Are you uncomfortable around younger people? Do you feel that as time passes you are aging, losing something, losing a part of you that you once had, and don’t know why but are completely satisfied with the answer, “That’s just the way it is, that what happens”? How old is old? Anything over 29? Anything over 40? Does old start at 50? You see, my point is that there is no real answer, it is up to you, and that means it doesn’t matter unless you make it matter.

I can’t stress enough the importance of attitude because this is enough to bring the whole house down if you are of the second view of yourself in relation to the world. Once you start to think in terms of imaginary concepts that work against you without any possibility to overcome them, you are then the creator of a category of obstacles and difficult situations for yourself. It’s up to you then how large this category becomes and how powerless you are against it. Since it’s all up to you, how big will you allow it to get and for how long before you really can’t do a thing about it? Because this is quite easily the root of most inability to stay young and vibrant to contribute to the world and allow yourself to experience life without self-sabotage, I’ll stop here and next time we’ll talk about all of the ways to enact youth and physically make the body look and feel younger with the right attitude intact.

Presented for the thinking, rational mind, it may leave you wanting for more to satisfy your heart’s mind. This is a place where words are not expressed, where talking serves no purpose, and you fuse your most base and lustful desires into harmony with what your mind can be most at peace. This natural fusion leaves you soothed into stillness, lasting bliss, and a sense of calm that dictates your actions and decisions with confidence backed by wisdom.

In case you weren’t sure how to say that you wanted exactly this, it’s perfectly fine to simply agree with the previous sentence. This is what the whole-body orgasm is, and it is a direct corollary to meditation and its goal, and the physical experience is what is known as, in very plain and flat English, orgasm through sexual intercourse.

Women comprise the majority of western yoga’s identity. It stands to reason then that some of these women may get a small peek of what they are working toward in a yoga class, and caught up in the moment with a plethora of thoughts and concentration combined with physical movement scientifically designed to target, stimulate, strengthen, and awaken sexual energy and the body’s related organs, may experience an orgasm. It helps if there is an instructor that either touches the student or simply exudes just what the female yoga student finds extremely favorable in that “take me I’m yours” kind of way.

This is not the whole-body orgasm, but simply, an orgasm experienced in an unexpected way in an unexpected situation in an unexpected place.  It’s special, certainly, but given some time, that specialness wears off, until maybe it happens again.

Sexually speaking, women are more complex creatures than men. Sex and the desire for sex which leads to the performance of sex exists in the mind for both men and women. But because we are created different, actually exactly opposite of each other physically so that we can successfully couple at the genital region, that life experience as either man or woman, in concert with the mind where sex exists, creates equally opposite viewpoints and conditions that we deem perfect for even entertaining the possibility of sexual union. It is a wonder sometimes that anyone is having sex at all, and because of this, many people aren’t, would like to, and are standing in their own way of experiencing this part of life given to them to enjoy fully and to bring happiness and ecstasy on the deepest level imaginable. People walking in this state radiate a glow that is unmistakable to onlookers, and it is also quite obvious when it is absent. In many ways this is no different from samadhi.

So, back to women and yoga and spontaneous orgasm. What you aren’t being told is that many women have difficulty in the bedroom. Many have partners with whom they can’t even experience orgasm. This is unfortunate, and probably a lot of hard work for their partners to become their sexual heroes. These same women and others with sexual challenges can tend to be the ones having these physical revelations in yoga class, and I don’t want to make any light of it because if they can then translate their revealed path to sexual liberation to the bedroom, or the park, or the parking lot, or a bench on Main St., it’s just another step in the right direction toward the goal. But it’s easy to get stuck in the short-lived pleasure of physical orgasm that stays physical and doesn’t evolve into the unbreakable connection between mind and body, flowing without limitation, ready to be accessed at any time to the full potential of enjoying what this gift has to offer.

Concentrating on the genitalia and keeping the focus there is the mistake that will stop you from experiencing the whole-body orgasm. That piece of information may sound obvious now as it is contained in the words “whole-body orgasm”, but in no way are the genitals to be excluded. A woman by definition of how her body is created to participate in the sexual act is the receiver of her lover’s gifts of attention, desire, unselfish motivation to please and be the creative force behind her sexual pleasure. It can help to envision a woman willing and ready in her sexual pleasure as an instrument like a violin that is anthropomorphically dying to be played by a master’s hands. Indeed, every woman is just such a violin, a beautiful creation of exquisite beauty ready to be caressed by the hands of a talented and skilled lover; but sometimes this violin may need to be retuned, re-stringed, humidified, even repaired by an expert. Women, ask yourselves, “Which kind of violin am I? Am I ready to be played this very instant? Or do I need to work on myself just a little, retune the strings? Do I need more than that, do I need repair by a professional before I am ready to be played wonderfully for hours by my lover, creating the most beautiful music imaginable?”. Men, ask yourselves, “Am I worthy of playing the finest, most beautifully crafted instrument that is perfectly tuned and ready for me to play? If the instrument is just slightly out of tune, can I tune it and then play the most beautiful music imaginable on this almost-ready yet beckoning curvaceous work of art? Or does this gorgeous, precious instrument that has so much potential in it require to be taken in for repair by an expert with the intention of playing sonic masterpieces once it is ready? Lastly, am I talented and skilled enough to take on this task?”. These simple questions can tell you a lot about yourself that either you didn’t know, or have been avoiding, hoping they didn’t really matter. Your Higher Self knows better, and ignoring that wisdom can only go on for so long before it has to be confronted.

Sexually enlightened individuals, a descriptive phrase that singles out a small category of all enlightened individuals, should not be mistaken for perverted people or sex addicts. You can tell quite easily who the perverts and sex addicts are by being driven into conversations or actions steered by them that only stop and rest on the notions of sex, what may lead to sex, promises of sex, and advertisements for great sex. The world is full of these people, and believe me, I wish this world had so many enlightened individuals as it did sexual addicts, deviants, and perverts. Overzealous and overtly religious, or pious people, may even mistakenly call me, this blog entry, and everything to do with yoga a sexual perversion, but let’s not get irrational.

Since sex exists in the mind, keep in mind that sex is simple. If it doesn’t feel simple, then you’re doing it wrong. There may be too many things piled up against your door keeping it closed shut so nobody can get in. Removing all of the things in your mind that are in direct conflict with sex is the only way to get going if the starter pistol is being fired and you’re not running. If you have a tendency to sabotage certain pleasures for yourself, even after removing all the obstacles in your mind you may find other excuses to not enter the race, like “I don’t have my running shoes”. Well, if these kinds of things happen, be honest with yourself, and try barefoot running—you may enjoy it more. The desire has to be there, the willingness to participate in the cosmic symphony that awaits you has to be there, and the person who is your sexual counterpart has to be there to stroke the strings; this is not a one-man, or one-woman show.

So you do yoga. Have you been meditating? No? Oh, sorry, stop reading right here. Once you have all of the above on your plate and ready to be served, that’s where the parallel experience of all of your meditation comes into play to experience the whole-body orgasm. Otherwise you’re standing still on the precipice with nowhere to go but to be left with fully experiencing normal, localized, physical orgasm. It’s okay, billions of people live their entire lives and die experiencing no more than that. Sounds popular. Are you the type of person that makes decisions based on what’s popular, or what is right for you?

I’m not trying to be exclusionary, I’m being discerning and inclusive. This blog is about yoga. People want in on yoga for some reason. Better sex is probably the most easily sellable reason. You can go ahead and have the best sex of your life without yoga just like the billions I described above, and there are plenty of people out there to teach it to you, and maybe even have sex with you along the way. You can even be a person who does yoga and still have the best sex of your life without having yoga impact that aspect of your life.  Seek yoga for sex and all you have is the sex. Seek yoga for yoga, and you have everything imaginable, and more.