Downward Facing Blog

How to find your personal balance using the hidden energetics of yoga

(Bangkok Post article March 27 2008)

Behind the scenes in a really good yoga teachers mind is rationale about how to sequence postures and breathing together. How hard to push, how long to hold, even which nostril you breathe out of, all play their role in how you feel leaving the studio.

The effect of yoga practice can be cooling or heating, an effect of the teachers’ sequence, and most importantly, your attitude while you practice.

Cooling postures are done slowly, encouraging a sense of release. This in-turn nurtures the body and nervous system. This is useful if you are overworked and stressed out. Heating on the other hand is reducing, and detoxifying, which can be good if you are not already depleted. The test is to feel into your own nature. There will be times when it is in harmony with your natural rhythm to nurture yourself and go slowly, and then times to push a bit, to break up your stagnation. Heating and cooling extend off the yoga mat and into the way you live your life as well. Simply by becoming aware of these two principles of what heats and what cools, are the keys to finding your balance.

Which one are you?

Career driven, intense and focused people have heat and the principle of fire in abundance. The slackers in life are ‘cool’. Being too hot and focused, or cool and defocused comes with its unique advantages or problems in life. Intense focus brings high levels of achievement, but it also may bring hypertension and heart problems. Being a slacker probably doesn’t do wonders for your bank account, and may lead to a slothful, overweight body. The fiery types often reach personal crisis, realizing that they MUST slow down and the chill ones may struggle to muster up necessary courage and determination.

It’s fascinating to see how a lot of the world’s characters are divided along these lines. How you practice yoga is reflected in this as well; in terms of your consistency, focus, effort, and detachment. When I have the good fortune of working privately with individuals, I always assess my students along these lines before teaching. One of the first things I do is simply look in your eyes. Do they move around a lot? If so, holding you in a posture longer might be a good idea. Do the eyes look intense and focused? Then we’ll focus on relaxation and an attitude of detachment.

One of my students looks at me with focused, intense eyes, telling me she has specially booked time out of her day to relax NOW. She opens her office at 7AM daily and gets more work done than the all the staff combined. She and I do a lot of cooling down. Another student of mine with eyes like a monkey can’t seem to focus for more than a few seconds. I make him work hard, holding postures longer or even shouting at him to bring his attention back to one point. She gets a lot of stuff done in life, and feels stressed out. He’s an underachiever but mostly relaxed. Two different people, with different life track records, and both of them require different approaches.

Effort and surrender in yoga

Aside from sequencing and obvious dialogue or attitudes, there are two yoga techniques used to create and release heat. For heat, you keep the eyes focused on a single point (drishti). For cooling, you can yogic-ly smile in a special way (shambhavi).

Drishti is done in postures so in a forward bend, you steadily look at the tip of the nose, or when you are in a backward bend you gaze towards the third eye. In the system of yoga I teach there are nine such advised places to look, each posture having its own focal point. With good focus powers comes something palpable in your energy, and you begin to glow in this indescribable way.

Special ‘yogic’ smiling is the antidote to the heat of focusing, which is done simultaneously with the eye focus. Your lips come into a faint smile while releasing the back of the mouth and the roof of your mouth lifts up and feels hollow. It’s just like tasting delicious food and saying, “hmmmm”! Your whole physiology smiles as your mind temporarily goes into a blissful trance. It’s the release on the pressure cooker so your pot doesn’t explode. When practicing yoga, the idea is to use both eye focus and smiling simultaneously. It steadies the mind, prevents injury, and produces a blissful condition of mind.

I am a kind of intense person, and for me to find balance, I practice this yogic smiling throughout the day. It gives me an instant release as my mind pulls inwards for a refreshing shower of awareness. On the yoga mat or off of it, you can use these two techniques at anytime or in any location. Simply observe your own nature and either heat up (focus) or cool down (detach) until you find your perfect balance.