Lazy Man Yoga

THE THREE SIDES
TO INNER PEACE

REST, RELAXATION AND RELEASE

Allan Saltzman

REST

The easiest thing in the world to do is rest. It is also the hardest. What could be easier than doing little or nothing? But in a world where success and accomplishment are king, resting is almost a sin. There just isn’t the time what with money to be made, house and garden to tend and children to raise. Even our marvelous machines look less like labor saving devices now and more like masters and we the slaves. No. Rest is not an option for most of us. Our minds and conscience forbid it.

Yet without rest we are dead ducks. Sleep is when most of us get some rest but even sleep has been shortened and curtailed in modern life. Light bulbs and round the clock schedules have eaten away at the 8 or 9 hours of sleep we need. For centuries people went to sleep when it got dark and got up at dawn. The one advantage our ancestors could have had over us is that they probably got more sleep. It may be no small advantage. It affords the body and mind a vital down time for healing, renewal and recovery.

Rest implies some stillness of limbs and relaxation of muscles enjoyed over time. It may be for only 20 minutes or an hour (and called meditation). It may be for a day (the Sabbath) or a week (a vacation) or a year (a sabbatical). One religious tradition, as etched into the 10 Commandments, tells us to take a Sabbath day every week and to keep it holy. In a way it is this particular religious practice and observance that just might make the most sense to our modern rational and scientific sensibilities. All the mountains of metaphysics, theology and religious mythology may boil down to this. Learn to rest, practice it and what is spiritually real and valuable will come to you. There is the sense that in the sphere of religion nothing else is as important or even needs to be said. Talk about God and we get confused, but practice rest and we are onto something real and authentic.

RELAXATION

We need to relax a little to rest and there’s the rub. We might not know how. Why we have become so tense may be a long story and not one we need to dwell on. The remedy to all this tension may also be a long story but one that does deserve our attention. We are not talking here about the kind of tension that is volitional and potentially useful. We can will volitional tension to occur and it works for us. Another kind of tension is called tone and it is this perpetual level of background tension that may be set too high. Our autonomic nervous system is behind this tension (tone) and conventional wisdom tells us it is beyond our awareness and control. And yet it still may be possible to pull back the veil that cloaks our deeper functions and to get a glimpse of what goes on there.

Besides the 5 senses, (sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch) we know we possess, is another sense we rarely acknowledge. This is the kinesthetic sense and it gives us our deepest awareness of ourselves, an awareness of muscles, organs and joints. Quiet the other senses (and perhaps the conceptual mind too) and the kinesthetic sense will appear. What this sense can allow us to view is how tense and strained we really are. It may not be pretty, it may not be pleasant but this is our condition. We are gripped, trapped in a vice of tension we can’t escape from. But then again perhaps we can.

Almost everyone has some way of relaxing. Take a walk along a country road, pet the dog or listen to music. Better yet soak in a tub of hot water, take a massage or practice some gentle yoga. If and when the kinesthetic sense ever dawns on us, life can take on a whole new turn. How we view and use our bodies will largely change. Where once we exercised our muscles, heart and lungs with forced and mechanical movements, we now give the body a chance to express itself and have what it wants. And what the body needs and wants could be a far cry from those exercises we were taught in school and in the gym.

When the kinesthetic sense acts as our guide we will be much more likely to address those feelings of tension, stiffness, strain and fatigue that become increasingly apparent. We may discover for ourselves where yoga actually came from (the kinesthetic sense). We may be inclined to stretch, move and massage ourselves in a way we were never taught. The kinesthetic sense is a true guide and it is showing us the path out of this trap of tension, pain and fatigue. As this inner sense of ourselves blossoms we may be able to focus our attention on specific areas of tension and strain and then experiment with the ways and means to relieve these conditions. Muscles and joints, that were only pictures in an anatomy book before, start to make their presence felt within our living bodies. We can actually feel the tension there and also those natural impulses to stretch and move in ways that would afford relief. What a relief it is to engage in such practices. This is not mind lording over the body anymore but mind and consciousness in accord with the body.

In this way of feeling and moving there is wisdom and a kind of self-indulgence that just seems right. Yes this is self-indulgence. This is giving ourselves what we want and need in a manner that may not be sanctioned or even understood by the society at large. That society may promote speed, force and control but we now know better. We are learning the wisdom and good sense that comes with relaxation.

RELEASE

Realizing the truth about our condition can be quite a revelation but also a very bitter pill to swallow. Large areas and small are in the grip of tension. The powerful, posture creating hip flexor muscles, the diaphragm (our principal breathing muscle) and the deep neck flexor muscles may all be in varying states of contraction. Shortened and contracted, these muscles will strain the areas they are in and distort our bodies. Feeling clamped, cramped and gripped and in this vice of tension, we view now, more clearly, what an emotionally burdened and suffering soul we really are.

This inner landscape of the body may have a spine that is bent and twisted with soreness and pain evident between many of the vertebrae. Our head feels heavy and hot, too full of a charge of energy and blood. Lungs may be constricted and feel folded up in a way that seriously impairs our breathing. Even our hearts can seem pinched, twisted and out of place. What kind of being is this that can be so cruelly constricted and warped? To one degree or another this is the human being as presently constituted, and it is a being crying out for some release.

Every constriction, kink and distortion we feel can have its day of release. All our efforts are directed to that end and so through a judicious and measured program of stretching, limbering, massage and manipulation we begin to untangle and release. To let go and release is not really accomplished through great effort but through an attitude of surrender. Within our own nature lies the wisdom and inclination towards healing we are seeking; so surrender to that nature and let it have its way with you. It will show you the way, the way to openness and release.

A new being is under construction here, one that is moving beyond perpetual struggle, conflict and strain. There is a freedom to be found, not the absolute freedom that the philosophers endlessly speculate about, but the freedom to be found in a natural ease and flow. Experiencing ease and flow is also the experience of pleasure. This is healthy pleasure that comes to us of its own accord and frequently as our tensions and anxieties melt away. As our hearts open and breathing unfolds our sense of being alone and alienated in a foreign universe gives way to feelings of love and compassion and being right at home with where we are and who we are. Here is a peace and ease and rest that is beyond the understanding of our restless intellects and although alluded to at the beginnings of most religions it is soon forgotten as doctrines and dogmas hold sway.

Ariel, The Fearless Man

We passed an old fellow on our trail walk today hobbling along slowly, leaning on his aluminum cane, but seeming to enjoy every uncertain step he took. I mentioned to Jan, as we passed him and said hello, that he seemed to be really enjoying himself despite his age, handicap, and difficulty walking. Not everyone we encounter on the trail is out for pleasure and enjoyment. Maybe half of the people we do encounter are out for exercise and either whiz speedily by, hunched over their bicycle, or else are dripping sweat from running. Many a grim and determined look appear on their faces. This is not a picture of enjoyment and pleasure but rather the look of extreme effort, will power in action, and grim determination. To each their own torture, but if that is exercise I want no part of it.

Jan and I usually sit at the half way point of our walks, and today we sat for an extended period of time, maybe for half an hour. The sun was warm and the scene was particularly beautiful with the autumn colors before us while leaves were tumbling down in a gentle breeze. We relaxed and merged a bit with the scene we were viewing. With some effort we began our walk back and again we encountered that old fellow with his aluminum cane. Feeling friendly and quite relaxed, we engaged him in conversation. Here was an old warrior. He told us about his combat experiences in the Korean War. He was a member of the 82nd Airborne, a very hardened combat unit. (His name is Ariel and I thought that more than appropriate for someone in an airborne unit.) He had spent 18 months in real combat, parachuting into hails of bullets and raining a few down on the enemy at the same time. He had taken a bullet in the belly and shrapnel to his arm. He had led over a hundred men into combat many times and took a bullet in the gut for his troubles and delivered quite a few to their targets besides. And even at what must be 80 years old or better he seemed more than ready to do combat again, if the need arose, and he showed me how he would wield his cane if the opportunity presented itself.

I told him he was a fearless man but also the happiest and most contented fellow we had met or seen that day. Maybe being fearless helps. Here was an octogenarian, missing a lung, missing part of his colon, leaning heavily on his cane and hobbling along this sunny autumn trail with a big, broad smile on his face. He had obviously seen it all and so much that was brutal and ugly in his life. But, on such a day as this, there was only enjoyment and pleasure for Ariel, the fearless man.

Americans don’t bathe much. Oh, they stay plenty clean by showering and showering may even be a better way to get clean. A bath is not so much about getting clean but more about soaking and getting relaxed, maybe very relaxed, and that might be why Americans don’t bathe. Just today, in a conversation with a lady friend, she admitted that the last time she took a hot bath she couldn’t lift herself out of the tub she was so relaxed. It is a fearsome thing to get that relaxed, and many of us are in no shape, both in body and mind, to dare it.

The ancient Romans loved their baths and plunked down elaborate bathhouses wherever they conquered. The best way to civilize a barbarian is to get him to bathe or so those ancient Romans must have thought. Their baths were as large as swimming pools and came in varieties from very hot to tepid to cold to suit every mood and temperament. Business and politics were conducted at the baths and they must have discovered that after a hard day of conquering or cheering the blood spectacles at the coliseum, there was nothing like a hot bath to soothe and calm the nerves and muscles.

The other famous bathing culture is the Japanese. They don’t usually wash in the bath just soak and socialize and relax. It is something of a mystery to me how the Japanese can be so technologically advanced, hard working, and industrious and at the same time be a bathing culture. Perhaps one of the keys to their success is that they have learnt to enjoy and indulge their need for relaxation in their baths and it has proven to be the renewal they need that allows them to work hard, when they must, and to succeed at what they do.

A shower can happen in a few minutes. A bath should take some time, maybe a half-hour or more, in order to obtain the benefits it can offer. There is almost nothing that I can think of that is more relaxing than a warm or hot bath. It is almost impossible to stay tense when immersed in pleasantly warm water. Muscles will inevitably have to relax, tensions melt, and even the cares and concerns of daily life start to melt away in a warm soak. It is almost impossible to resist and that may be the problem. Do we want to get that relaxed? Will we ever recover enough to function again? It is a real fear.

We have a whole nervous system devoted to rest and relaxation and it is called the parasympathetic. Those nerves oppose the sympathetic nerves that give us the fight or flight response. And it is fight or flight that often defines how we feel and react most of our waking moments. Stress, tension, drive, ambition, identity, ego exist in this realm of the sympathetic nerves. It is where we often feel we are centered and from where we derive our essential being. But there is another realm of existence, expressed through the parasympathetic nerves, as natural to our being yet often smothered and rarely heard from. And yet it is quite natural to indulge this other side of our being, to rest, relax, release, and to feel easy, peaceful, and pleased, but how much of that do we ever really see in the world? It rarely seems to happen. There is a real hesitation, even fear, of peace and ease and rest. It may appear too sweet an indulgence, a dangerous surrender and too very seductive; that it will drain us of will power, drive, ego and ambition and that we cannot let happen. No, not ever.

So we avoid the bathtub and soaking in it. There is real danger there and it is to be avoided at all costs. Our very identity, our sense of self, can melt in the tub and be washed away and that we cannot let happen. So shower, get on with your busy life, and don’t look back. But if your racing heart, tensed muscles, and fevered brain have ever had enough, then slip into a tub and find out, at last, what you have been missing.

I pulled this article out of my files today and reread it. Perhaps I thought about this article now because I have been seeing my wife, who is recovering from surgery, in her bathrobe lately. I must have copied this article out of a magazine a few decades ago because I really liked it and, if you read it, you will see why. It is right up my lazy man alley. I am having trouble finding the author, Barbara Holland, to ask her for permission to include this article on my web site. I think she is living in a cabin in the back woods of Virginia (and probably in her bathrobe) and may not want to be found, but I’ve included her article here and this is her web site:
www.BarbaraHolland.net

She has this web site but, when I requested permission to use this article, the email I sent to her was returned. I will have to continue looking for her. She is a well known author with many books and articles to her credit and here is the one I found twenty years ago that I particularly liked:

NOW IS THE TIME FOR BATHROBES, THE CLOTH OF SLOTH
by Barbara Holland

I do my best thinking in a bathrobe. I’m ashamed of it, naturally, and if anyone catches me at it I fake a sneeze; when you’re sick you can wear a bathrobe. Otherwise you’re supposed to be dressed for action.

America has never been a nation of bathrobe wearers. Paul Revere, Annie Oakley and General Custer all slept with their boots on. We’re a frontier people and proud of it. Even now we feel we ought to be clothed to fight off Comanches at all times, and if the mailman catches us bathrobed we mumble and blush.

It has nothing to do with modesty, since a bathrobe covers us generously. It’s the shame of being thought inactive. Bathrobes, the cloth of sloth.

Everyone says we live in an age of increasing leisure, defined in the dictionary as the “state of having time which one can spend as one pleases.” But we shouldn’t please to sit around in a bathrobe. We should go skiing. We wouldn’t apologize to the meter reader if he caught us in our ski pants, but wearing a bathrobe isn’t a proper use of free time. To be decent, American leisure must be vigorous. If we were out jogging we’d be considered a useful member of society, but in a bathrobe we’re a leech, a slug, a parasite.

Bathrobes restrict activity. You can’t mow the lawn or do aerobics in them — that’s their charm and their shame. In the full-length female model you can’t even walk up the stairs without tripping, though most male bathrobes stop at the knee, no one knows why. Perhaps men are thought to have more need of their legs: if a fire starts, they can carry their swaddled wives to safety.

By limiting movement, the bathrobe releases the mind, like going into the lotus position but less painful. Enfolded in fabric, unable to bustle about, we can still read the Sunday paper, listen to music, sort old photographs or paint watercolors, absent-mindedly wiping the brush on our laps. We probably won’t muse over the budget deficit because you need proper clothes on to pay serious attention to current events. That’s why the Sunday paper should be read in a bathrobe; it softens the hard edge of happenings. We can contemplate the arms race and a recipe for asparagus souffle with equal detachment. Bathrobes encourage the long view and a sense of the durability of a civilization more likely to include souffles than the arms race.

The bathrobe keeps us home, excused from dealing with the world. Feet on the coffee table, we are draft exempt from the battles of business and daily life. “I’m not dressed,” we reply when people suggest that we drive them to the airport or put up the storm windows. Outside, time grinds through its endless events, large and small, but we can’t be expected to take part: we aren’t dressed.

The bathrobe keeps us gentle. It’s possible to sulk in a bathrobe, but not to rage. A furious person in a bathrobe would be a joke, commanding neither respect nor fear, and when we feel a fit of temper coming on we instinctively go put on street clothes in which to have it. Habitually bad-tempered people never wear bathrobes — in order to stay prepared. You can make love in a bathrobe, but not war. Statesmen should wear bathrobes at all times.

Statesmen are probably afraid of them, though. A lot of people are. They won’t admit it, but they think the bathrobe mindset, once yielded to, might weaken them forever. The soft folds, the easy sleeve, would soak through to the muscle and decay it. The taut bow of their determination would be quite unstrung. They would — perish the thought — relax, and this would be followed immediately by chronic unemployment and beer for breakfast.

You can tell bathrobe phobics because they never oversleep, and always dress and tie their shoes before they drink their coffee. They often say “I like to keep busy.” They say this whenever they see someone in a bathrobe.

Accomplishment means scurrying around with your shoes on. The prophets tell us about a future in which the modern executive will stay home and do it all by computer hookup, but I don’t believe it — the American people would never stand for it. I mean, what’s to stop him from getting through an entire day’s work in his bathrobe? What would Daniel Boone say?

A friend of mine has cleverly replaced her bathrobe with a sweat suit. She’s still lounging around over coffee at noon, but she doesn’t look it; she looks as if she got up at 5 to jog. People in real clothes see her and feel guilty, instead of asking scornfully if she’s sick. Still, a sweat suit just isn’t the same. It doesn’t impart the same peaceable viewpoint. Sweat suits are involved, bathrobes are detached.

Besides, you can go outside in a sweat suit, so it doesn’t get you out of doing things. True, I’ve driven people to trains in my bathrobe, but it isn’t decent and I always hoped the robe would pass for a coat. I tried to put a coat expression on my face instead of a bathrobe expression. The brisk, dressed expression.

Surely, surely, it’s time America packed in all this booted-and-spurred business, barging out to shoot buffalo or clean the gutters. Must we always stay dressed to chase cattle rustlers? Can’t we put on our bathrobes now?

Bathrobe wearers of the nation, stand tall. Open the door freely and proudly, even to your in-laws, and let them see what you’re wearing. The frontier is closed. It is time now for philosophy, for contemplation, for bathrobes.

Perhaps even for an afternoon nap.

Here is a quote from one of my favorite books, Breath, Sleep, The Heart and Life by Acharya. It suggests a relationship between our breathing and our mental state. The smooth, cool breathing he alludes to I take to be the diaphragmatic kind and the smile he refers to is not the kind you see on magazine covers or what people put on their face when they have their picture taken. It is called “the inner smile,” an indication that you are peaceful and pleased and you feel it in your body and face.

Two Yardsticks of Breathing

Catch yourself at any given moment and see if your head is hot or not. If it is, smile and drop the load of thoughts and anxiety from your head with a smile.

Yes, just break in a smile until the head has become cool.

While your head is hot, you will notice your breath is interrupted. You will also notice, as you are dropping the load from your head and neck, your breath has become normal again.

These are the two yardsticks which will enable you to bring health and happiness in your life. You will live to be a real person.

We do not care what is your life, what is your faith, that is, what is your occupational consciousness or your attitude toward other fellows and God.

One law you must obey. Flow along with cool breath and you will live. Stumble along with jerky breath and you die.

Smile and you live. Drop the smile and you die.

From: Breath is Life in the book Breath, Sleep, The Heart and Life by Acharya.

After a little stretching and rolling around on the floor this is where you will find me.

Modified yoga corpse pose.

If you are going to play dead, you might as well be comfortable.

Pressing on the back of the shoulder, on a heart related pressure point, might help ease and release the heart for a deeper relaxation.

I’ve started to get Smithsonian magazine and it gives me a needed break from reading Time magazine. The news is so full of conflict and crazy people doing awful things. There is just so much of that I can stand.

This afternoon my wife and I went over to a Bird and Butterfly garden that is part of the CT Experimental Agricultural Station just a couple miles from where we live. We sat on a bench near a small waterfall with a water lilly garden and just practiced peaceful contemplation for a half hour and hardly spoke with each other. We were the only people there. I noticed how my face relaxes during those times, and how I feel like there is a hint of a smile on my face.

I came home afterwards and read an article in Smithsonian magazine about some Japanese gardens that are also suitable for contemplation (the word used in the article). I looked up that word in the dictionary, and I am growing more fond of it all the time.

Most folks don’t seem to have the capacity to be still, quiet, and to enjoy a natural scene for a half hour or so. Perhaps we view such passivity and inactivity as a sin or a waste of valuable time. As if becoming peaceful and easy inside is a waste of time. What has happened to people that they have lost their natural capacity for peace, ease, and rest, a capacity that our cats and dogs practice with such ease and regularity?

Allan

Yoga and meditation have a long history and yet what we have come to know in the West now as yoga is really only the tip of the iceberg and a tip that has probably formed more recently than many realize. The ancient practice of yoga was much more meditative and contemplative, characterized by a stillness and deep awareness that sometimes can seem to be sorely lacking in our current practices. The ancient practitioners (including the Buddha, probably the most famous yogi and certainly the most influential) did not spend much time doing headstands, shoulder stands, spinal twists or contortionistic backbends. Not that they were unaware of their bodies, probably quite the contrary. They just managed to align, relax and adjust themselves with such ease, grace and subtlety that no one noticed or bothered to make much of it. Perhaps the ancients did not suffer the kinds of strains, tensions and distortions that we moderns do and so did not need the blatant exertions, like those seen in modern yoga classes, to correct the milder and fewer physical flaws they experienced.

Yoga, when it is truly inspired and rightly guided, can have a very different feel and look to it from the yoga that is practiced today. What has come down to us as traditional yoga is probably an amalgam of more recent developments and influences including, surprisingly enough, English gymnastics and calisthenics. Even the yoga we call Hatha was probably developed only in the last 500 or 600 years of Indian History. The more ancient practices of yoga and meditation go back 3 or 4 thousand years and probably even predate the Aryan invasions that occurred around 1500 BC. Some Indus Valley clay seals showing men seated in what appear to be meditation postures have been unearthed at sites in pre-Aryan, Indus Valley city-states.

Perhaps there is a happy middle way of practicing yoga today that lies somewhere between the exertions of a contemporary Hatha yoga practice and the more sedentary and contemplative style of the ancients. It may be especially important for those of us known as the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1960 and now in our 40’s, 50’s and older) to look for a kind of yoga that is easy, gentle and sensible. This yoga would be a more mature practice for a more mature person. It is certainly true that what may be suitable for an 18 year old or someone in their twenties may not be right or even desirable for those of us two or three times that age. Where the 18 or 20 year old may benefit and enjoy the powerful twists, bends and balances of a vigorous practice, the 55 and 60 year olds can just as easily be injured and strained by them. There must be an easier, subtler and even more therapeutic way to practice yoga, and there is.

A yoga practice can be guided by one’s own inner body sense of tension, stiffness, strain and distortion (the kinesthetic sense). Certain key muscle groups can, when tight and short, be prime culprits in creating our stressed and distorted bodies and addressing the issue of tightness and constriction in these muscles can be a large and effective part of a more mature yoga practice. A number of simple yoga tools can greatly enhance this kind of practice. Some of these tools can be found at my commercial web site at: YogaTools.com

YogaTools.com – Relieve Tension, Stiffness, and Physical Distortions with Yoga Tools

A good recliner can be a fine place to have a period of rest and relaxation. Take a mini vacation from the hustle and bustle and find a half hour or forty minutes to just consciously rest and relax. It might not be as easy as you think. Our natural restlessness and desire to be accomplishing things can definitely get in the way. But it all can wait as you lie back and sink into the chair or bed or whatever affords the greatest comfort.

Rest and relaxation have a natural course to take with certain specific experiences as a part. Arms and legs get heavy. Hands, and maybe feet, become warmer. Head cools; mind settles down and becomes quieter. A gentle paralysis renders you immobile or disinclined to move. Sleep may come or may not perhaps depending on how tired we are. This is an altered state in that it is different from what we usually experience when we are conscious and awake.

Our cats and dogs are experts at this. We most likely are not. Our thoughts too often tell us to keep moving, stay active, get things accomplished. That is all well and good but there is this other side to our natural functioning and to indulge it, on occasion, is to find our balance and our capacity for healing.