Month: August 2016

Just got back from Tokyo this weekend – wiped out – upon landing I hear the big local news is that a certain Silicon Valley executive who used to live very nearby died of a heart attack while surfing last week. He was only 48.
It’s sobering. I think I have heard relatively “young” people die from over-worked pump in the last few years. It’s a tragedy when they leave behind a family, especially growing children.

So I take to HEART all what I learned from the Cardiovascular module in Yoga Therapy. Exciting and exhilarating – makes you feel ALIVE ! but …certain thrills, as in steady build up in interval training, we need to work up to perhaps.
We have to not only focus on the FAST BEATING UP-TICK, the INTENSITY in the variable interval training but the lull, the quiet, the relaxed state too.
Some people are all about go go go and they don’t know how to sit still or relax. In fact, “relax” has become a bad word. Yet, that dip, the calm is needed too.
When the body and mind is placed in tranquil setting,
Your breath lengthens and so does your life …
Some people do not feel like they are LIVING unless they are DOING something – anything.
The heart, the pump needs the variability …the thrills and excitements are fine but it also needs to slow down and
feel the flow. The flow synchronized to the natural fluctuations in the energy fields around us.

AND while there are exceptions, we can’t treat our body the same way at age 18, age 28, age 38, age 48, age 58, 68, 78, 88, 98, 108 (maybe?)and so on. We do change.
We do age.
Some gracefully.
Some not.

Dr. Hinohara is 104 … Here’s his advice.
My mother was under his care when she was a little girl… and he sang and danced into my late-aunt’s room at St. Luke Hospital last year.
Imagine, this old gentleman sauntered into my aunt’s hospice room – she was in the last stages of cancer care. My aunt and cousin were needless to say very polite to the 100+ doctor.
I wonder if he remembers any of this … and does it matter.
Interesting to note his son is a cardiologist in Redwood City, California.
Hope to not ever have to knock on his door for help but also feeling comforted to know there are so many great doctors here.
If only we listened to our body.
Myself included,
so yoga helps with that.
The practice helps with sharpening our dulled senses. I do realize for some dealing with pain, that’s what we want – dulled senses. To be numb.
But what if there was no pain?
What if?
Yoga helps with pain management as well.

I would not claim yoga as cure-all BUT the practice helps when modified to fit the needs of that particular student.
Flexibility of the body is not required, just the mind’s.