Healthy Living - Yoga Living Magazine

HolisticEducation
by Linda Dobrowolski-Lyng
IUSED TO THINK THAT ONLY DOING YOGA ASANA
WITHOUT STUDYING SCRIPTURE WAS LIMITING –
UNTIL THE DAY I ‘GOT’ MY FIRST POSE THROUGH
DOING THE POSE ALONE. It started with a personal challenge
to hold each side of Warrior II for five minutes, then
incrementally up to 20. I managed the first five minutes quite
easily but, had to go beyond my usual abilities of concentration
to reach beyond that, especially when it came to doing the second
side! Somewhere in midst of this challenge, I allowed necessary
shifts in my stance to allow the pose to flow through me
rather than making such effort at holding my body in the pose
– and the difference was magic! Suddenly holding my arms was
not a burden but a necessary outflow of the incredible energy
that was being generated in my naval and heart centers. Energy
rose from my feet through my legs and fed these centers while
concentration on my fingertips activated the Ajna center
between my brows. I realized that I could control the flow of
energy by pumping from the Base Chakra.
During this time, I had been struggling with some unresolved
questions about the Bhagavad-Gita – how could the author of
the Gita place a metaphysical treatise that emphasized nonviolence
in the midst of a huge
war Knowing that subsequent
events in the Mahabharata
involved Arjuna fighting and
winning the war for the
Pandavas, how could I reconcile
this apparent spiritual
quagmire I had given this a
lot of thought, but it was not
until I was fully able to surrender
to Virabhadrasana
II that the answer was
revealed in a way
that not only
addressed the concerns
of my mind,
but gave me a deeper
understanding that I can
only describe as including
my body and spirit
in the ‘knowing.’
In fact it
wasn’t until
a later time
that I connected
the pose with the questions and it was quite a surprise
to find that what I had thought could only be solved by the
intellect had had been resolved through asana! Would I have
had the same insight without studying scripture Perhaps not,
but this experience definitely reinforced the completeness of
each stage in studying Yoga and marks the time I began to
form more definite ideas about the potential of movement in
the experience of learning.
Thinking back to my school days, I vividly recall the frustration
of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a classroom much
more than any of my lessons! I have found how helpful taking
a walk or doing a bit of Yoga could be when trying to sort out
a conundrum at work, but never made specific connections in
using movement as a problem-solving tool.
Luckily for thousands of school children, a gentleman named
Paul Dennison, PhD., dedicated his life to studying the relationship
between posture, body movement and brain function.
Dennison was an educational therapist who along with his wife
Gail developed the field of Educational Kinesiology in the
1970s. The associated Brain Gym program, www.braingym.org,
includes a series of physical movements that was originally
developed as a method to assist the learning disabled to learn
more effectively. I recently completed the first leg of the Brain
Gym program and found that the movements are based on
Yoga postures, Acupressure and Applied Kinesiology and generally,
proper credit is given to the source of the movement.
Like Yoga, Brain Gym has found application in many fields
from education to athletics and the performing arts. Brain
Gym movements are used widely in the British educational
system, (although there has been recent controversy about
the science behind some of their claims). Many of the exercises
are to said to enhance neurological connections
between both sides of the brain through the midline to
enable better sensory integration. In my limited experience,
I was able to verify that some of the exercises allowed an
increased flow of energy in the areas specified in the literature
as well as proving out positively in the more subjective
‘before’ and ‘after’ reviews of the particular skill you are
trying to improve.
I have to admit I used to feel annoyance when I saw that Yoga
was integrated within a ‘product,’ or that the emphasis was
only on a part of the discipline and not the whole. But, I have
come to realize that within each small part, the whole is capable
of being revealed – the ground is prepared. For this, I can
only be grateful and amazed!
s
18 YOGA LIVING September/October 2007