Orchids, yoga, and lying fallow

About to bud

Fallow land is land that is not planted with crops. It is left to lie uncultivated for a season in order to improve the quality of the soil. In the olden days, before chemical fertilisers forced land into continual productivity, parts of a farm would be left fallow for a short time before being replanted on a rotating basis.

Humans also need to lie fallow. Everything does. Everything needs a reset, and a downtime. Just like choosing not to reply is a form of replying, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The symbolism of the yin-yang teaches exactly this: everything has an equal and opposite. All activity requires rest, all restfulness requires its activity. Meditation is a lovely way to fallow from the activity of daily life.

Hibernating

Montreal is known for its vibrant cultural scene and especially its summer festivals. Canadians know this is possible partly because of the government’s massive investment in arts and culture and partly because of freezing Québec winter. Montrealers hibernate so that they can bloom in the long, warm summer days.

When it’s cold, you don’t hang out on café terraces. When it gets dark by 4PM, you tend to snuggle up at home. You lie, as it were, fallow. All that downtime can make for some great art, if you’re that way inclined.

Yoga and meditation invite us to lie fallow. They invite us to stop and observe and be still. They invite us to open up a space into which may arrive…anything. All that downtime can make for some great (re)awakenings, if you’re that way inclined.

Hello, little one!

Orchids

I am a lover of orchids. I am regularly given orchids who are lying fallow. Once the bright blooms wither and die, the plant itself is nothing special. Just a few thick and waxy leaves and some rather strange, grey, worm-like aerial roots. No, like this they are not eye-catching. But, give them some sunlight, a little fertiliser and a few months’ rest and they will reward you with dozens of delicate flowers that can last up to six months.

I grow orchids in my massage room. Orchids seem to thrive in the ambience of a therapy room. The stillness, the quiet, the controlled environment suits them just fine. I have tried growing other green plants – ferns, small palms, devil’s ivy – but with little success. They seem much happier in the upbeat and variable environment of a home. But orchids, conversely, in my home don’t thrive. They survive, they bloom, but they don’t burst forth as they do in my massage room.

Hey buddy!

I like to muse that this is because the massage room is a place where their fallow time is respected. They are just allowed to be, to not be beautiful, to receive no comments, to attract no admiration. They just sit, and wait, and gather strength. Perhaps they are meditating. Perhaps they are astral flying back to the South East Asian jungles from whence their ancestors came. I don’t ask and they don’t tell. I just watch them gather speed and know that, come February, their fallow time will end with a burst of colour, life and manifestation of their innate glory.

New shoot on an old shoot

Sit, be still, breathe

Think of meditation and yoga as the stillness before the flowering. The point of postures and breathing and contemplating is not the acts themselves but what comes after. It is not about how much you bend or how long you breathe, it is about what is created by those acts. The yoga is a vehicle, what comes next it totally unique, it the manifestation of YOU, your true nature.

I often say “I don’t do yoga, yoga does me”. Yoga and meditation have allowed me to see who I truly am and to be who I truly long to be. I was a shy and sensitive child who lived through various traumas which, cumulatively, made be edgy and nervous and hyper-vigilant. I was high-functioning and was no beast, but I consistently found myself acting in ways that I would later regret, making hasty decisions that I would later regret and, most importantly, NOT DOING things that I would later regret not doing. Yoga brought me down to Earth. It grounded me and cuddled me and calmed me and gave me a purpose. Yoga and meditation are unfailingly generous, and they are the best time investment I have ever made. I lay fallow for a long time, I lie fallow on a regular basis. But what came out of all this, the life that I am living right now, is marvellous.

As winter draws in, in the Northern Hemisphere, I encourage you to lie fallow. Take time out and watch the clouds, watch your mind, watch your emotions. Be still, breathe, all is coming.

Yoga and minimalism

When I think of yoga imagery, minimalism the last thing that comes to mind. The Hindu aesthetic is quite clearly maximalist, full of colour, symbolism and detail. This spills over into Western yoga. Yoga leggings, to choose an obvious example, are often brightly coloured and patterned. Many yogis adorn their studio spaces with multi-hued batiks. This is super good, a few years ago I would have done the same. I really like colour. But, there has been an evolution in my consciousness and my yoga teaching and practice. I call it Y O G A | M I N I M A L I S M.

Am I minimalist in my home life?

Yes and no. It has been the work of my lifetime to overcome my hoarding habit. Not only am I born in the Year of the Rat (Rats are considered to be innate hoarders), but both my parents had a marked tendency to save everything for a rainy day. Add to this an exaggerated sense of responsibility for The World (I thought that if I *didn’t* recycle or dispose of ethically I would doom us all!) and some pretty tight years, economically, and you get a person who holds onto to stuff. A big part of my personal (r)evolution was learning to part with things – EVEN if I like them, EVEN if they’re useful.

It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it and now I can confidently say that my possessions do not overwhelm me and are manageable and useful. I had to do the same thing with my yoga. Beginning in 1999, I have practiced yogâsana, and was lucky to find Viniyoga in 2007. Since then, I have worked on focus and exclusivity, and it has brought such an enormous sense of peace and joy – as well as more minimalism. I just do this one thing – Viniyoga and mantra. (My thesis for my first YTT was on mantra and it is core element of my practice). Even so, I do always try to deepen certain poses (the progressive development over time is called “Vinyasa Krama”), and there are still moves that I would love to master. But, that is only desire and I can choose to act on it, or not. For now, I choose to gentle and calm postures, no straining, lots of rest. It works for me and I think that it can work for most practitioners with more than a decades’ practice on their mats.

Y O G A | C O N F U S I O N

Yoga is a bit of a hoarder. It has a lot of facets. You start with postures and suddenly find pranayama. You start with mantra and suddenly find yantra and suddenly you think “I am going to print some t-shirts”. Modern yoga is definitely NOT minimalist. Yoga is full to bursting with ideas, scriptures, imagery, history and options to personalise your practice. It is far too easy to be drawn into ever wider and more disperse circles of yoga.

For example, you begin by studying a 200-hr Sivananda YTT, and after a few months’ teaching, you understand that you need more depth. So you go on a 500-hr Yoga Therapy YTT. This helps, but by going to a different lineage, you find that the same posture is known by different names, depending on whom you study with. You start to investigate and find out that Kundalini yoga doesn’t even use Sanskrit, it uses Gurmukhi. You listen to the Kundalini bhajans and discover that you like chanting. Suddenly you have a white turban and a spiritual name. You get into White Tantra but find the scene a bit way-out. You pull away and suddenly you’re doing Beer Yoga

Sounds funny, right? But it is not that far-fetched. It is modern yoga and it can pull you in all directions, if you’re not careful. Being pulled in all directions is the OPPOSITE of yoga, which, of course, means “to unite”. Yoga is about becoming united in body and mind, united in your path and your purpose and united in your heart and spirit.

Y O G A | M I N I M A L I S M

Minimalism, as applied to yoga, means sticking to one path, and using fewer and fewer props and postures. Yoga, union, is, after all, found in meditation. Meditation does not use anything at all. I have said many a time that meditation is profoundly counter-cultural as the one who meditates consumes nothing at all, hardly even air.

The more I practice and teach, the less I do. And I mean that in the gross, outerworld way. Of course, I try to stay “in yoga” all the time, even when I am out dancing or whatever. But I don’t feel the need to make challenging yoga shapes, post every day to Instagram whilst wearing cool yoga gear or even convince people of the many incredible benefits of yoga. In fact, I have become very minimalist in my approach to yoga.

My list:

  1. If someone hears the call to do yoga, they will. If not, don’t try to convince them.
  2. If a practice accelerates the breath, it may be good and fun, but it goes against yoga. They say you’re born with a certain number of breaths and using them up faster shortens your life. Move and breathe S L O W L Y.
  3. If you can stop, do. If you can just sit and breathe, do it.
  4. Focus on the exhale, not the inhale.
  5. Remember the Yamas ahimsa and santosha. Ahimsa is “no harming”. Don’t hurt yourself. Santosha is “enjoyment”. Make your practice fun and enjoyable.
  6. Gratitude. What a gift is it to practice yoga, to live in a time and a place in which yoga has travelled across the globe and embraced us all. Thank you, Purusha.

To close and honour the ending principle

Hindu philosophy, as applied to yoga, identifies Lord Shiva as the closer of things, the one who lets things end. As I finish this post, I offer my words to this principle. Ending, emptiness, the void – these are all quite frightening to the Western Mind. We see endings as finite, but if you see Life itself as a continuum, as energy gathering, unfolding and dispersing, then endings aren’t so scary. Minimalism in yoga is allowing your âsana practice to draw inwards, to become tighter and smaller and, well, more minimal. Don’t be afraid of letting a sweaty or active practice fade as you age. It may be just what you need. After all, if we don’t open space for the new, how can anything new enter our life?

Yoga Breathing Classes 101

Yogic Breathing is Healthy Breathing

Rachel Rose meditating and practising yoga breathing
Meditation and breathing

I have spent much of the past two years teaching people to breathe. I still teach postures, but pranayama mostly fills my days, now. Sadly, I gave up teaching group yoga classes during, and then after, the pandemic. It was a super hard time. I am glad that all the videos I streamed via my Facebook Page, Alteayoga with Rachel Rose, are still online. They are a poignant reminder of the dark days of the first confinement.

The SHA keeps me super busy, as do my massages.

At time of writing, I am offering Yoga Breathing Classes here in Altea. Please contact me if you would like to know more. Breath is life!

How we Breathe

Don’t forget that I began writing about the mechanics and fine tuning of breathing here in this blog. I called it “How We Breathe“. You might find something interesting there. Go have a look!

Breathe.

Alteayoga is back!

Dear yogis and yogis-to-be – I am back! Soooo happy to report that yoga did not let me go. I had a wobble, I admit, back in June. After lockdown eased and suddenly we were out on the streets again, I didn’t quite know where to situate myself. I had grown quite used to giving class via Facebook Live, every evening at 7. (If you want to check out those classes, pop on over to my YouTube channel and select the Playlist “Yoga for Small Spaces”).

When the new reality hit – the SHA still closed, the place where I had given class a closed space with no room for even four people, the prospect of wearing a mask whilst practising – it seemed insurmountable.

So, I just did my own practice. I kept hitting the mat. I healed a hurt right shoulder (darn dogs pulled me down…again) and I kept posting little reminders (on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter) that it is going to be ok, that yoga has answers for questions that you don’t even know how to formulate, but which are there, bubbling away under the surface. I just….kept practising.

Lo and behold, people starting asking me to teach again. I am not going to pretend that I have LOADS of students. But, the students that I do have are pure love, super cool people, a real “type” of person – creative, independent, a bit wacky. Hey, I guess I resonate with those kinds of people…wonder why?

Well, long story short, I started working at QIYoga here in Altea and the rest, as they say, is history. We had a few sweet months of classes in the centre, and are now practising online. But, we are there, we are checking in, we are a group, a little team of happy yogis and I am so, so, thrilled to be able to teach.

So, yoga, and yoga and more yoga. Oh, and some laughter, good food, good friends, sunshine and all those good time things. Blessings, catch you on the mat.

-RR

Yoadict – leg movements

In installment 2 of my Spanish-English Yoga dictionary, I am going to look at the legs. Check back to installment 1 for arm movements.

  • Feet together = piés juntos
  • Feet slightly apart = piés ligeramente separados
  • Bend your knees = doblar ó flexionar las rodillas
  • Lift your heels = levantar los talones
  • Stand on your toes = Ponte de puntillas
  • Stand on one leg = apoyate sobre una pierna
  • Lift your leg = levanta la pierna

That’s it for now. Hope that helps!

Even yogis have down days

Today was just one of those days. Feeling narky, out of sorts, with too many troubling thoughts running around my head. I wasn’t in dire straits, just a little off-colour. It happens to all of us, even yogis.

A mindful day

Difference is, we yogis have tools to work with when things seems askew. Mindfulness, deep breathing and conscious relaxation all help to keep intrusive thoughts away. Honestly, on the tough days, there may be a true mishap, but as often as not, you’re feeling bad because of your thoughts. The Buddha talked about the two darts: the first dart is the real situation, what actually happened to cause the hurt. The second dart is what we think about what happened. Often, the first dart is sharp and painful, but short-lived, while the second dart burrows in like a burr beneath a saddle.

On the blah days, it is usually our own thoughts that asail us. So, we observe, then calm them.

Today was my day off. I am not the only person, I know, who feels more stable on work days. Personal life is much more unpredictable and informal than work life, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming.

The weight of household chores and paperwork, then some attempts at a social life or creative release, can leave us feeling a little dispirited and pressed for time at home.

My strategy has always been a “one foot in front of the other” approach. I look at the mess and just start with one small thing. I keep myself focused on the task I have chosen, knowing that it is better to finish one or two small tasks than start a dozen and leave them all unfinished. It has been shown that mess and clutter contribute to feelings of anxiety, so I try not to leave things unfinished. Just get going.

Today, I did some DIY. I am not gifted at DIY, but today I worked slowly and methodically. I did my little tasks well enough. I found the tidying up afterwards particularly tedious, but I plodded through it, realising by this point that some of my narkiness was probably due to hunger.

I washed the dishes while cooking some rice, and sung mantras. Om Tare Ture Tuttare Swaha was the mantra of the day, but I just sing whatever occurs to me. I sang it in my own style, but the version in the link is a cool one. I felt much better by the time the food was ready, so eating it was a pleasure. I sat quietly, doing nothing other than eating mindfully. I chewed and savoured every bite, breathed only through my nose, and paid close attention to every detail. It was heavenly. By the time I got to lie down for a little siesta, it was nearly 17:00. I had a meeting at 18:15, but set my mind to relaxing. It can be hard to relax when you know you have to get going again soon, so I just counted my breath, letting the exhale be longer than the inhale, and relaxed my muscles. I drifted into some state of (un)consciousness. Whether it was sleep or just deep relaxation, I rose feeling much refreshed.

And now it’s evening and I took some time to do a drawing for this post. Drawing mindfully is another wonderful relaxation technique.

As for the million thoughts in my head: they are still there, and the big decision I am turning over still needs to be made. And Mercury is still retrograde, so who knows what will transpire. But, I feel better, happier, lighter and in control of my emotions. And that is what it’s all about.

Yoga and the Blues

It is an open secret in the yoga world that most of us arrive here after trauma or trouble of one sort or another. In fact, I have heard said since my earliest days in this strange world of integral healing “people arrive at yoga when they are tired of suffering.”

I think it’s true. The suffering just goes on and on. As the Buddha observed, life is suffering. We suffer in our minds, our bodies and our spirits. Sometimes a little at a time, sometime all three at once.

So, the blues bring us to yoga. And yoga helps make the blues a little more manageable. But the blues don’t go away. They are there, we just learn how to deal with them better.

What are the blues, anyway, and where do they originate? The blues is emptiness. The blues is the sense that something is missing here, and we can’t quite work out what. The blues is the void. Each part of the body-mind-spirit construct may give cause for the blues. The body has appetites and desires. The mind never stops. The soul aggrieves with its absence.

Body

When we are young, maybe the body doesn’t suffer as much. At least, the aches and pains are fewer and easier to deal with. As we age, maybe our mind gets calmer, we find some wisdom. But the suffering is still there. The body asks loudly for food, shelter, comfort, touch, stimulation of the senses. We are constantly being dragged off by desire and appetite. It is the way of the body. The body is the lovely prison that we inhabit for a time, and its wants generally dominate our entire earthly life.

Mind

The mind is just as bad, if not worse. The mind wants distraction. It likes to be busy. It oscillates between fear of what is to come and remorse for what has been. Rarely does it sit quietly, without judging and in the present moment. Mental fluctuations, called vrittis in Sanskrit, cause us untold suffering. As we think, we feel, we have emotional/limbic responses to our thoughts. Our heart may race, or we feel choked and tearful, or hot and agitated. This somatisation of thought and emotion wreaks havoc in our lives. The mind is the construct through which our soul has to view the world. The mind requires much cleansing and polishing lest its distortions be mistaken for reality.

Soul

The soul, well, the soul suffers all this. Its voice is the quietest but the most insistent. It talks to us in the dead of the night. It whispers to us when things don’t “feel” right. It begs us to listen, but generally we don’t. And so, the soft restful peace of the soul is denied us. We suffer its absence.

What does all this have to do with yoga and the blues?

So, the other unspoken secret of the yoga world is that yoga teachers also get the blues. We are often, by nature, sensitive people. Yoga makes us more sensitive, but less vulnerable. How?

When you have become aware of and able to control the subtle energy (prana), you can control how much energy sticks to you, and how much of your own energy you allow to escape. You get a kind of protective bubble.

When the blues come knocking, instead of, as before, running out to find bodily comforts (alcohol, food, etc)…before plonking down on the sofa with binge watch a series…before succumbing to that empty soulless feeling…you just sit with it. You watch yourself having these feelings, you don’t detach from these feelings, you feel them, but you watch yourself feeling them. You watch where the breath moves, what parts of the body feel heavy or shaky, you watch yourself and you don’t do anything. Except normal, basic care. Healthy food, good rest, time with living being (pets, plants, trusted people) and you just…wait it out.

(For completeness, let’s remember that medically diagnosed depression is not the blues and probably needs professional intervention…)

Patience being a virtue and all, the blues soon pass if you just let them. Nothing ever gets resolved overnight. Hurts happen, disappointments bite, life is a bit shit sometimes. But yoga says : “sit still, watch, wait it out”. And you know what? It works. And it hurts hardly at all.

Fascia and slow yoga

On the Alteayoga facebook page, I re-posted a piece from Dr. Mercola’s web site in which fascia is thoughtfully discussed.  I suggest that you pop over and read it, then come back here. 

Summing up: 

Fascia makes up about 20% of body weight and is like a battery pack for muscles.  It also transports water in the body. It seems to be tightly related to pain, especially chronic pain.  Movement is the best method for relieving fascial pain.

I teach hatha yoga in a very specific way.  Firstly, following the Viniyoga method, there is almost always a dynamic and a static phase for each posture.  This means that you get both the flow of vinyasa-style yoga and the holds of classical yoga.  

Uttanasana 6x + 6B

You can see that the whole posterior muscle chain is activated in this sequence.  There is a clear indication of breathing.  Also, there is abdominal compression.  All this contributes to making this very simple sequence highly effective in moving muscles and, ergo, fascia.

I design my classes with anatomy in mind.  There are four kinds of yoga:  Bhakti (devotion), Raja (intellect), Karma (selfless service) and Hatha (movement).  I am very clearly a hatha yoga teacher, and use my deep understanding of kinesiology to design sequences within sequences all with a clear objective in mind.  Loosening up the deepest layers, the bits that no one can get to, the parts that hurt but you can’t put your finger on.  Yoga, specifically Viniyoga well-taught, gets to these parts.

Practise, all is coming.  The Guru is within.

How We Breathe: Moving things around

Introduction

We usually just think of the breath as being Oxygen in and CO2 out…if we think about the breath at all.  Yoga practitioners may think about prâna.  But few of us take the time to contemplate all the other things that move around because of the breath.

Most of us know a little about the blood.  We have all had a cut at one time of another, and we have all seen a butcher’s shop in our lives.

Most of us, however, know very little about the lymph, the interstitial fluid or the cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF).

While the blood is moved around the body by the heart, the other fluids don’t have such luck. The lymph is primarily moved by muscle flexion and breathing.  The cerebro-spinal fluid is mainly moved by the breath and pressure differences due to blood flow and heartbeat. Interstitial fluid is drained by the lymphatic system which, as already mentioned, is moved by the breath.  Are you beginning to see a pattern?

Lymphatic flow and the breath

The lymphatic system is an amazing semi-closed network of vessels and nodes that runs throughout the entire body.  Its anatomy is not yet fully understood.

Lymph is a somewhat thick liquid that carries junk from the cells back to the central circulation so that your body can dispose of it.  Lymph is not made by the body in the same way that blood or bone is made.  Lymph is a by-product of normal metabolism.  There are times when you make more lymph – ie:  a healing wound that is inflamed will produce more waste, which then becomes lymph.  There is a baseline lymph level called the lymph obligatory load.  When you have more lymph being produced, the lymph obligatory load increases.  Are you with me so far?

Lymph is created when the junk and water that is hanging around the cells in the interstitium gets swept up into the lymph pre-collector channels.  Once there, it is called lymph although, really, it hasn’t changed. It’s just that, now, it’s in the lymphatic system and gets called lymph. For the sake of simplicity, we shall lump lymph and interstitial fluid together.  So far, so good.

The lymph vessels get bigger and bigger as they get closer to the centre of the body.  At some stage, they become able to make little pulsations which push the lymph onwards. Backflow is impeded by valves that are similar to the valves in the veins.  These are called “bicuspid valves” and are one-way.  Side note:  varicose veins are caused, often, by malfunction of the biscuspid valves.

Still, the best way to pump lymph from out to in (distal to medial) is by moving muscles and by breathing.  The movement of the diaphragm down and up creates a relative vacuum with each breath.  This pressure difference acts like a piston-like pump, and sucks the lymph into the central lymph ducts.  To return to general circulation, the lymph accumulates in the “Cisterna Chyli” before moving into the thoracic duct. The Thoracic duct is the biggest lymph vessel in the body.  It crosses the diaphragm at the lowest and back-most of the holes in the diaphragm. It empties the lymph into the subclavian vein, just below the collarbone.  Once there, the liquid is no longer lymph.  It is now part of the blood.

So…lymph is created in the cells by normal metabolism.  It needs to get “home”.  It moves because of the breath.  If we breathe badly, lymph flow is slow and we may develop edema, which is swollen tissue, full of water.  So, breathe well and love your lymph.  On we go…

CSF Flow and the breath

“Breathing acts as a pump to propel CSF up the spine and around the brain.”

“With each breath the diaphragm descends and the rib cage expands, leading to a drop in pressure in the chest cavity. This drop in pressure draws blood from the brain in veins that empty into the heart. The skull is a rigid and confined space. As blood returns to the heart, CSF is drawn up the spinal column to replace the lost volume.”

source:  (https://goiheart.com/blog/brain-breathing-to-improve-internal-health)

This is very similar to the way the breath affects the lymph. Now, take a moment to contemplate this:  the Central Nervous System (CNS) is the brain and spinal column, put as simply as possible.  Most of you have heard about discs (ie:  “slipped disc” or “herniated disc”) and the meninges (ie:  “meningitis).  Well, the discs are like hard little sponges between the spine bones and the meninges are like cling-film coatings around the brain and spinal column. The meninges carry the Cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF).

Discs don’t have blood supply.  (“During development and at birth, vertebral discs have some vascular supply to the cartilage endplates and the anulus fibrosus. These quickly deteriorate leaving almost no direct blood supply in healthy adults.“)  It seems that there is some blood supply to the edges of the discs via capillaries, the smallest of the blood vessels, and that nutrients are diffused into the centre of the discs, but very slowly.  So, to nourish the intervertebral discs is quite a challenge.

Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is produced in the choroid plexus of the brain and then moves along slowly with each hearbeat, circulating through the ventricles of the brain and then throughout the subarachnoid space of the spinal cord and brain. Bathing and nourishing the nervous system, CSF also cushions the brain and spinal cord.

source:  https://www.conquerchiari.org/articles/special-topics/daily-living/nuts-and-bolts-of-spinal-anatomy.html

They are, instead, nourished by the CSF in the meninges.  We write “meninges” with an “s” because it’s plural:  there are three.  One is just around the brain, but two of them go all the way down the spine to the lower back.  And yes, they nourish and protect the bones, discs and nerves of the spinal column because they transport CSF.  So, it’s a nice thing to have that CSF moving, isn’t it?

If you are well hydrated, you should be able to influence the movement of CSF via breathing and movement.  Logically, when one is lying down, the CSF pressure is about the same all the way along the spinal column.  This is also the case for lymphatic flow:  it is greatly improved by simply lying down.  I am often asked to contrast yoga with Tai Chi or Qi Gong.  While no expert on either practice, and with a healthy respect for both, I always give the same answer:  I like yoga because of the floor work, specifically that part where you lie down and breathe deeply.

Viniyoga, the breath, and moving fluids

Yoga is a practice that is based upon linking the breath with movement.  In Viniyoga, we usually open the body on the Inhale and close on the Exhale.  We use some breath retentions (krama) for added effect.  We teach breathing in postures and in isolation (pranayama).  In addition to promoting flexibility in joints and muscles, yoga lengthens and deepens the breath.  Over time, the resting breathing pattern of the practitioner changes permanently.  Because Viniyoga focuses so much on the breath, it is a deeply healing form of hatha yoga.  It is also accessible to all.  A person may not be able to dominate a complex flow sequence, but they can probably work comfortably with Viniyoga’s more gentle but just as effective sequences.

Conclusion

Breathing is more than just gas exchange.  Breathing is a motor, a pump, and it moves fluids around the body.  Specifically, lymphatic fluid, interstitial fluid and cerebro-spinal fluid are moved by the pressure gradients created by deep diaphragmatic breathing.  Yoga is a practice that teaches people how to breathe, and through the correct use of postures and sequences, we can positively influence the practitioner’s health.

Further Reading:

“Why Yoga Works”  http://www.healtouch.com/csft/yoga.html