14 Mar

How Millennials can Find Peace and Serenity through Ancient Yoga Practices

Yoga is one of the most ancient traditions that we are aware of, yet it remains widely popular today. People all over the world continue to incorporate yoga into their lifestyles by studying, practicing and teaching it daily. It seems that the tradition has become even more prominent in recent years, often feeling like a new trend rather than one that was born in Northern India thousands of years ago. This is evident in Vancouver where you will find it almost impossible to get through a day without spotting someone carrying a yoga mat or walking by an outdoor yoga class. The reason that this practice has not dwindled with age and become lost in ancient history is because of its undeniable ability to positively transform lives by touching our minds, bodies and spirits.

Mind

In the age of information overload, we often lose ourselves amidst the chaos. Clarity is power in today’s hectic world, and yoga teaches our mind to focus our attention in the right direction. Through deep breathing and meditation, yoga allows us to reconnect with ourselves and our bodies. During this process we learn how to take charge of our thoughts and to access inner peace. Calming the mind in this way relieves stress and reduces overthinking, and this can lead to an overall improvement in our mental health. A trouble-free and quiet mind can also induce creativity, allowing us to serve our own purpose instead of somebody else’s.

Body

An obvious yet extremely important benefit of yoga is the physical strength that it builds. Practicing yoga weekly will tone and strengthen the muscles, improving our body’s physical appearance but more importantly its resilience. Deep stretching will relieve our body of tension while challenging poses will push us beyond our limits, resulting in muscles that are both stronger and more relaxed. Through this practice we can also achieve better posture, balance and flexibility.

Spirit

Creating harmony within ourselves will result in a happier experience of our outside worlds. Yoga allows us to be more present, and the ability to live in the moment can lead to a higher consciousness. With this higher consciousness comes increased awareness, allowing us to focus on the beauty by which we are surrounded. We gain a strong sense of connection to this beauty, and without the illusion of separation we are guided in becoming more sentient beings. When we achieve this state, we are capable of sharing immense love and kindness with all beings and all of nature.

The 21st century is one within which many have become lost in a fog of worldly-chaos and excessive consumerism. On the other hand, it is the century that has found us waking up and redefining happiness. There is somewhat of a barrier between the two, and the link that will connect them is yoga. This is the very mission of the International Yoga Festival which comes to Vancouver for the third time in June 2019 – To connect us to our predecessors from whom we can learn. To bring unity to Vancouver by connecting one and all. And to help the community bridge the gap between health and happiness.

“Our mission for this festival is to inspire and connect our communities to live creative, healthy, vibrant and stress free active lives through the practice of yoga and mediation.”

26 Nov

The Value of Meditation in a Fast-Paced World

I’m a person that’s all about productivity, living life to it’s fullest and I’m willing to do anything to optimize human functioning. That’s one of the reasons I meditate. Sitting and doing nothing you say? That doesn’t sound like a good use of time when you live a super busy lifestyle! Allow me to explain.

Some of you may have heard of Tim Ferris, author of Four Hour Work Week and other works. His most recent book titled Tools of Titans is 673-page encyclopedia into the lives of today’s most influential and impactful entrepreneurs, or what he calls “world class performers”. Some of the most notable (for me) include Malcom Gladwell, Tara Brach, Wim Hof, Paulo Coelho, and Brene Brown, His book can also be described as a compilation of the numerous interviews he’s conducted over the years on his podcast, The Tim Ferris Show. He found that over 80% of these idols/icons/titans/billionaires practice some form of meditation in their daily routine.

Meditation, you think to yourself, might as well be synonymous with the word fluff. Let’s make it a little more concrete and research-based.

There are many different kinds of meditation. Meditation can vary according to the way meditation is done (eg: independently versus with a group or teacher, passively or guided), and the phenomena to which mental activity is being directed (eg: thoughts, imagery, sensations, emotions). Depending on these variances, there can be some differences in the cognitive mechanisms that become activated.

The science of meditation has mainly focused on two types of meditation: ‘Focused Attention’ Meditation and Open Monitoring’ (OM) Meditation.

FA Meditation are the meditations, where you are given a mantra by a guru and you chant it repeatedly to yourself until you achieve mental stillness or enlightenment. To fall under the category of FA meditation, one can meditate on an object, the breath or a symbol. The practice involves returning the attention back to specified object when the mind wanders.

OM Meditation is the meditation practice in which one practices non-judgemental monitoring of cognitive and emotional events, creating a detached awareness of mental activity. This detached awareness of mental activity has been called ‘mindfulness’. OM meditation has often been called mindfulness meditation.

So, FA meditation is more attention regulation oriented and OM meditation is more oriented towards fostering metacognition or mindfulness. Both FA and OM meditation fall into the “attentional meditations category” as described in Dhal et al. (2015). Both FA and OM Meditation promote well-being through training our capacity to initiate, direct and sustain attention while strengthening the capacity to be aware of thinking, feeling and perceiving. Indeed, many practices use a combination of FA and OM interventions.

 

So how does meditation, whether it’s FA or OM, promote well-being? The average person gets anxious or overwhelmed from time to time. Some of us may have even been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Getting carried away by your thoughts might look like this: maybe you see an itchy red bump on your arm, you begin to wonder what it might be from, then you recall that you recently saw a sign in your doctor’s office last week about how 1 in 3 people will develop shingles, then you start to wonder if it’s possible that you might be developing shingles, it is something that could happen, as it did to a friend of yours… etc. etc. etc. Meditation teaches you to observe mental activity and the physical world without buying into the thought and catastrophizing or making a mountain out of a molehill. Let’s look at the research again to see how meditation helps with situations such as the one described.

Researchers have found that the brain structure actually changes in response to attentional meditation practice, and has been applied successfully in individuals with traumatic brain injury or concussion and in the geriatric population! Meditators have been observed to have increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is related to self-regulation of emotions, attention to thoughts and information for decision-making and bodily action), the insula (the structure linked to body awareness), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (linked to introspection and metacognition skills), and the default mode network (which becomes activated when subjects believe they are undisturbed and the demands to process environmental information is lowered). The default mode network is associated with less mind-wandering and reduced ‘chain-of-thoughts’ in long-term meditators (Brewer et al., 2011; Kang et al., 2013). In addition, meditators also see reduced activity in the amygdala (the emotion centre of the brain) (Taylor et al., 2011).

In layperson terms, meditation activates areas in the prefrontal and frontal areas to recruit more cognitive, emotional and attentional control and self-awareness. With more insular activation, you gain more bodily awareness. Since emotions often have a bodily sensation associated with it, with insular activation, you are aware of when an emotion is arising sooner. With practice, you gain less mind wandering (attentional control) and more non-reactive, non-judgemental awareness of thoughts (metacognition, otherwise known as mindfulness), and as a result you are more focused, more effective, more present and less emotionally volatile. You will be much less likely to fall into long, drawn-out rabbit-holes of negative thinking.

You can see how mindfulness is an important skill to develop and have if we want to be able to get through work, school, and life in the most stress-free and productive manner. Tim Ferris finds that consistent meditation has resulted in him achieving 30 to 50% more work with 50% less stress. Personally, I find that I get frustrated less often and with less intensity and this is with me only practicing ‘when I feel like it’. ‘When I feel like it’ might be as little as 10-minutes a day, a few times a week.

Stay tuned for the next article: How to Begin to Meditate.

06 Jun

THE WORLD IS OUR FAMILY – Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

By Yogacharini Maitreyi

We have many worlds within

I grew up with my grandfather speaking to me about one big family , of Carls Sagan, Aryabhata (an Indian astronomer and mathematician who lived around 3000 years ago) and of Greek gods. Though Aryabhata was popular, he mentioned how six thousand years even before Aryabhata Indians had advanced astronomical observations. He spoke of many civilizations and their ways. He spoke of  pharaohs being mummified as they thought that would make them live forever and of some Romans both rich and poor abandoning their newly borns in a practice commonly called exposure that exposed those babies to the elements.. He spoke of the best and the worst in each civilization.. He said  that though everything seemed larger than life for a child of 10 such as myself, all these worlds were within me. That is the beauty of the Yoga life where we see our highest and divine self yet are not afraid to see and shift our shadow or darkness as well.

Positive vibrations from different cultures uplift.

He loved Beethovan and I listened to the symphonies as well as listened to MS Subbulakshmi’s suprabatham (South Indian classical music)  and saw my grandfather cry to his favourites “Ram Niranjan” and “Guruji” by Kumar Ghandarva (North Indian Classical musician). Music was not only to feed one’s soul but to free one’s mind from limited perceptions. Positive vibrations not only uplift us but evoke altruistic qualities within us so we become a blessing unto the world. That is the science of manthra (chants to streamline the mind) and kirthan (soul song) where the vibrations shift physical, emotional and mental patterns for the better. Kirthan opens our heart to the cosmos and the divine

Even plants know what you think

He made me aware of how plants could sense what I was feeling.  Ayurvedic herbalists chanted and asked the plant to participate in another’s healing before plucking their leaves or whichever part was required. He spoke of how “The secret life of plants”, a book in English was speaking about similar yogic principles. The book mentions that an equipment was attached to the  plants, which indicated when the plants were agitated or had violent tremors when a person with the intent to harm the plant would enter the room. Also other plants which were not going to be harmed had tremors and empathised with the plant that was to be harmed. Being around him I realised we impact the world around us just by what we think. I saw how my negative thoughts could create tremors not only in plants but also in other living beings .

This was a key to help me see , feel and realize that we are all interconnected and impact each other even though we may not notice it .

Yoga helps us realize our interconnectedness

Yoga is a set of tools  like asana (science of body language), pranayama (expansion of energy), manthra (sounds to shape shift into the sacred)  etc and many practices like yama (conscious restraint), niyama (conscious cultivation) that enable us to realise this inter-connectedness. The word Yoga itself means, yuj (root word in sanskrit) or yoking or bringing together.

We see that what we put into the system with love and discernment will come to us a thousand fold.

We are more similar that separate

I was soon my grandfathers helper in watering the  hundreds of plants in my home with him and sometimes even speaking to a few of them as I went about it.

Just by living with him I was able to feel that we are all more similar than we would want to believe.  All living beings are looking for peace, happiness and to feel fulfilled.

All of us want to feel safe, respected and utilize our full potential. All of us want to be valued  and all of us want to love and to be loved

This is the Yogic principle of Vasudhaiva kutumbakam. This means the world is one family and is also engraved in the entrance hall of the Indian Parliament.   It is mentioned in the Vedic texts , the Maha Upanishad and the Hitopadesha

This expansive thinking is what is the need of the hour to unite us and not divisive thinking based on religious fanaticism, colour or race as we see increasingly nowadays. This same broad perspective of yoga is what I share with my students and guide them on a path of self awareness, self discovery and Self realisation.

Two principles by R. Krishnamurthy

I would like to share two things to live by, as my grandfather, my first guru, told me.  He said “Walk in the world like you do not care who this world belongs to and walk like this world belongs to you.”

By that he meant “Do not get intimidated by wealth or power or enamoured by it. Do not care or give too much importance to those external trappings.”  The next thing is if something needs to be done in the world, take care of it, protect it, stand up for what is right and nurture it and be compassionate ,just as if it belonged to you. Through all of  life,what stood me good was these two simple yet profound principles.

As I traveled to different countries, I remembered with gratitude how my first guru taught me to embrace many worlds. On this world yoga day let us all do the same.

Below  is a poem dedicated to my grandfather, my students and everyone on the evolutionary path to allow them to see and embrace the worlds within and without.

THE ETERNAL EMBRACE
There is a space
Where I’m neither man nor woman,
Young nor old
No colour, no race, not even a face
All I feel is my heart bursting with love

Holding the divine and you, in a long warm embrace

Yogacharini Maitreyi is a practical mystic who trains Arkaya yoga teachers& healers and creates conscious community around the world. She has trained many corporate heads in self mastery programs. She also runs a foundation for children living in slums in Chennai. She is in Vancouver in the summer to train Arkaya Teachers Next TT starts in July 2017 in Vancouver. Residential 33 day self healing and teacher training progrm starts 25th Jan 2018 in India. E-mail: infoarkaya@gmail.com;  www.arkaya.net