For some of us, stillness just doesn't feel okay. In fact, it feels frightening, intense, and wrong on a visceral level. Predators use stillness. If you look at a predator bird, say an owl, it is completely silent, watching for something smaller, more vulnerable than he is, from a vantage point. Survivors know this better than anyone. Stillness and quiet, especially quiet, can trigger our survival system to be on watch, seeking out any sign of danger. We are naturally wired this way, to stay "on" just as we are. And if a life has been ravaged by someone else's impulse, agenda, or rage that survival system can get stuck in the "on" position, making stillness impossible. Stillness and quiet may have preempted an abuse or strike or even a medical emergency. An innocent yogic call to silence may be terrifying to some, a call to stillness may be paralyzing.
What do you do when stillness is your edge? Why bother with it? When I am sitting still, after a day of work, a good hike, or after a hatha yoga practice, I can feel my body let down its ghosts--all the worry of vigilance and the vigilance of worry diminish. Fear and chronic worry are debilitating, exhausting, depleting and bad for relationships--I mean, what's left of you? Stillness is about refueling, among other things. And stillness is most often available after elongating the body and stretching the 72,000 nerve endings. And breath, the current of the emotional state--control that and you control your inner universe.
For 13 years, I would gain access to periods of stillness reliably after a vinyasa-based practice--a flowing, physically demanding practice that coordinates breath with movement. As an aging yogini, I now have hurts, large and small, in my wrists and shoulders from downward facing dogging it through those years of devotion. I would sometimes set up a mat in my daughter's hospital room or seek refuge in the hospital chapel, sun saluting in front of the faux stained-glass window. Now, not surprisingly, my limitations are showing. While Vinyasa brought me to more quiet routinely and reliably, it also strained me. So, I now must work on cultivating that same action of coordinated breath with movement in the Kripalu tradition of micro-movement but with the instruction of my own experience as well as from master teachers such as Angela Farmer. For example, through her Inner Body approach, I gain more mobility in the tightest places in my body if I move in and out of a posture such as triangle before sustaining it. Angela Farmer says, "the body likes to work and then release, work and then release." And then there's the coordinating breath. If holding a posture still triggers anxiety or agitation, which it can for me, then breathing in a particular way can help me move past the strong agitating sensation that can arise from the endurance of stillness. Think about it--if you are just enduring a posture, waiting for it to end, chances are you are holding loads of tension in the body and missing the miracle--that moment when the body is allowed to be strong and relaxed without clenching and gripping and refusing full breaths. This is where a student can investigate and visit stillness inside a structure through work and release, inflow and outflow, titrating moments of stillness into a hatha practice.
Recently, I attended a Gary Kraftsow workshop. His Viniyoga Therapy is a way of using yoga to regain mobility, reduce anxiety, and create a new back through slow, mindful movements. I thought I would be bored or agitated out of my mind! But I left one of his classes feeling as though my back had just been replaced. Then I left another class feeling my mind had finally quieted down after days of workshops, missing loved ones, and worry about my daughters while I was away from home. He teaches students to take a slow, smooth inhalation into movement and a slow, smooth exhalation out of movement--micromovements or little vinyasas! Interestingly, his yoga comes from the same Krishnamarchya lineage as Ashtanga which feeds the Vinyasa Yoga approach. I've managed stress, anxiety and bouts of the blues through vinyasa for years, very gingerly approaching stillness--which agitated. This practice makes sense to me. Warning: he uses Sanskrit names for the postures. If you're okay with that, I hope you body-sense what I'm talking about!
Gary Kraftsow's DVD Viniyoga for Anxiety may be useful to those of you, who like me, experience anxiety now and then and who want to approach stillness through yoga. Unfortunately, I'm unable to post the You Tube Sample of this DVD. It's really a great example of where movement with breath can take you when flow is slowed down. Go to You Tube for this, if you like.
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