Slowing Down the Mind and Resting our Nervous Systems

Greetings Yogis and Yoginis,

This week in class we are considering "slowing down the mind and resting our nervous systems."

Mental tensions, frustrations, insecurity, aimlessness are among the most damaging stressors, and psychosomatic studies have shown how often they cause migraine headache, peptic ulcers, heart attacks, hypertension, mental disease, suicide, or just hopeless unhappiness.

-Hans Selye

A great deal of psychological stress comes from the rush and hurry of a turbulent mind, which jumps recklessly to unwarranted conclusions, rushes to judgments, and often is going too fast to see events and people as they truly are. Such a mind keeps the body under continual tension. It is constantly on the move - desiring, worrying, hoping, fearing, planning, defending, rehearsing, criticizing. It cannot stop or rest except in deep sleep, when the whole body, particularly the nervous system, heaves a sigh of relief and tries to repair the damage of the day.

Simply by slowing down the mind - the first purpose of meditation - much of this tension can be removed. Then we are free to respond to life's difficulties not as sources of stress but as challenges, which will draw out of us deeper resources than we ever suspected we had. A one-pointed mind is slow and sound, which gives it immense resilience under stress. With a mind like this, we always have a choice in how we respond to life around us.

Words to Live By: Inspiration for Every Day – Eknath Easwaran

The homework is to work on resting your nervous system even when you are not sleeping. Use the awareness of your breath to provide you with feedback about your physiological and mental states. Use this feedback to modify your thoughts, actions and your breathing to ultimately create the yogic response – a parasympathetic response. Work to learn what it is like to have a calm nervous system. Try to have a little bit of savasana in everything you do.

Blessings,

paul cheek
Rushing Water Yoga
The BKS Iyengar Yoga School of Southwest Washington
417 NE Birch St., Camas, WA 98607
360.834.5994

www.rushingwateryoga.com
info@rushingwateryoga.com

Serving Yoga to Camas, Washougal, and Vancouver Washington since 2003