Some people say Yoga is "not that and this" but a "Gym has all this!"
Yoga has following components:
a. Stretching
b. Cardiovascular
c. Weight Bearing
d. Muscle Toning and Strengthening
e. Flexibility Improvement.
f. Self Massaging
Besides that Yoga has Meditation, between and during Aasanas, between PraNaayaamas, and at the end of Yoga Session. Yoga is not only Physical, it is also a Mental, Emotional and Soul-level exercise.
The only thing is that Yoga needs time and slowing down of mental pace and body clock as part of the regime. Once you discipline yourself towards that, it is like getting a Milion Dollar Massage and going to Hawai on a vacation!
Doing Yoga is fresh air and open space, specially in morning, with the Nature and softness of grass with the Morning Dew, has its own benefits.
Yoga utilizes the principle of opposites, like Forward Bend followed by Backward Bend, and symmetry and anti symmetry, like Right Extention/Flexion/Adduction/Abduction balanced by the Left pairing Extention/Flextion/Adduction/Abduction to counter-balance, and create push-and-pull forces.
Stretching - Muscles and body tissues as such have a tough time discharging toxins, and that is one reason, why drinking a lot of water helps. When one stretches, the tissues get squeezed like a soaking wet towel, and the rate of excretion of the body waste from the tissues accelerates. Also the tissues burn energy in the process, and Heart Beat also increases to keep up with the fresh need of nutritional supplies. It also "strokes" the cells, and nerve endings, that increases the production of endorphins (like Morphine), which makes the body feel less pain and more pleasure. This also improves the Blood Circulation, as the vascular volume increases in the stretched part and that leads to Heart beating faster to supply more energy. Then there is a massaging effect also, which is good for the tissue's "well being".
Cardiovascular - In Yoga, the Heart is gently nudged to beat faster over a long time, off and on, and it builds an endurance that is more practical to life. Jogging and fast-paced exercises are good but they maximize one parameter only, that is the heart-beat - and perhaps at expense of increased production of Lactic Acid and soreness of body muscles. Besides the heart-beats increasing in Stretching, in Surya-Namaskar Aasan (Sun Salution), Paschim-Othan Aasan(Forward Stomach Bend) and inverted poses like Sheersh Aasan (Head Stand), Sarvanga Aasan (Shoulder Stand) and Hal Aasan (Plough), it also increases either beacuase of Lung's capactity being restricted, like in Forward Stomach Bend, or in Plough, or 1/3 of Body's Blood being pumped extra into the Heart, making the heart Expand, like in during Inverted Exercises. Besides that a mere physical energy required to do some Aasans paces up the heart slowly. During Aasanas, one is suppose to relax and capture back his or her normal breath and heart beats. Expansion of Heart with extra 1/3 Body Blood makes the heart Flexible and avoids plaque building up in Heart Muscles and in its Veins/Arteries. It is like a "Baloon Angio" Effect and similar effect is observed in Aasans and Stretches for others parts of bodies' vein and arteries.
Weight Bearing - In Yoga, one makes the body a Gym, and uses it to do weight lifting. Examples are Head Stand, Salabh Aasan (Scorpion), and many other Aasans. It may look very simple, but it is very subtly tough. Like doing the Kaga Aasan (the crow) one will know what focus, and weight bearing one needs to do.
Muscle Toning and Strengthening - Muscle Flabbing happens with aging and lack of exercises. In Yoga the principle of Opposites and Symmetry/Anti Symmetry is exploited for this. In fact, one can remove wrinkles and improve eye-sight as well, and get rid of Asthama. But having a faith and positive attitude is very important followed by discipline (which is hard to keep with the rat-race fast paced life style we lead). This also helps in old age related sickness and ailments. Muscles are equally important as the Skelton Frame.
Flexibility - Modern Science has established that the Degree of Flexibility is one of the indicators for Physical Wellness. If one goes to a Proactive Wellness Program as part of Health Insurance, one will notice that they also talk about this. In Chinese, there is a saying, the more Flexible you are, the more Alive you are! In Urdu, there is a saying, "Murda Kya Khaak Mudaa Karte He", or "What!, Dead can hardly move!!".
Self Massage - Internal and External Organs get the massage and stimulated, which is good for the Body as confirmed by the Modern Medicine. At the end of a Yoga Sessions, people often go to sleep during Meditation, because they feel so good, and if not then, after a few hours and specially after a hot shower. It is advisable though that one does not have bath after a Yoga session for a few hours, and has a shower before a Yoga session.
Finally Pranayama, helps one improve Meditation and other aspects of life like Ablutions.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Lotus Therapy
Lotus Therapy
BENEDICT CAREY
Published: May 27, 2008
The patient sat with his eyes closed, submerged in the rhythm of his own breathing, and after a while noticed that he was thinking about his troubled relationship with his father.
Jim Ross for The New York Times
ANXIETY AID Zindel Segal, a psychologist, demonstrating meditative therapy.
“I was able to be there, present for the pain,” he said, when the meditation session ended. “To just let it be what it was, without thinking it through.”
The therapist nodded.
“Acceptance is what it was,” he continued. “Just letting it be. Not trying to change anything.”
“That’s it,” the therapist said. “That’s it, and that’s big.”
This exercise in focused awareness and mental catch-and-release of emotions has become perhaps the most popular new psychotherapy technique of the past decade. Mindfulness meditation, as it is called, is rooted in the teachings of a fifth-century B.C. Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha. It is catching the attention of talk therapists of all stripes, including academic researchers, Freudian analysts in private practice and skeptics who see all the hallmarks of another fad.
For years, psychotherapists have worked to relieve suffering by reframing the content of patients’ thoughts, directly altering behavior or helping people gain insight into the subconscious sources of their despair and anxiety. The promise of mindfulness meditation is that it can help patients endure flash floods of emotion during the therapeutic process — and ultimately alter reactions to daily experience at a level that words cannot reach. “The interest in this has just taken off,” said Zindel Segal, a psychologist at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where the above group therapy session was taped. “And I think a big part of it is that more and more therapists are practicing some form of contemplation themselves and want to bring that into therapy.”
At workshops and conferences across the country, students, counselors and psychologists in private practice throng lectures on mindfulness. The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness techniques, up from 3 in 2000, to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, lift despair and reduce hot flashes.
Some proponents say Buddha’s arrival in psychotherapy signals a broader opening in the culture at large — a way to access deeper healing, a hidden path revealed.
Yet so far, the evidence that mindfulness meditation helps relieve psychiatric symptoms is thin, and in some cases, it may make people worse, some studies suggest. Many researchers now worry that the enthusiasm for Buddhist practice will run so far ahead of the science that this promising psychological tool could turn into another fad.
“I’m very open to the possibility that this approach could be effective, and it certainly should be studied,” said Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory. “What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”
Buddhist meditation came to psychotherapy from mainstream academic medicine. In the 1970s, a graduate student in molecular biology, Jon Kabat-Zinn, intrigued by Buddhist ideas, adapted a version of its meditative practice that could be easily learned and studied. It was by design a secular version, extracted like a gemstone from the many-layered foundation of Buddhist teaching, which has sprouted a wide variety of sects and spiritual practices and attracted 350 million adherents worldwide.
In transcendental meditation and other types of meditation, practitioners seek to transcend or “lose” themselves. The goal of mindfulness meditation was different, to foster an awareness of every sensation as it unfolds in the moment.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn taught the practice to people suffering from chronic pain at the University of Massachusetts medical school. In the 1980s he published a series of studies demonstrating that two-hour courses, given once a week for eight weeks, reduced chronic pain more effectively than treatment as usual.
Word spread, discreetly at first. “I think that back then, other researchers had to be very careful when they talked about this, because they didn’t want to be seen as New Age weirdos,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn, now a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, said in an interview. “So they didn’t call it mindfulness or meditation. “After a while, we put enough studies out there that people became more comfortable with it.”
Lotus Therapy
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(Page 2 of 2)
One person who noticed early on was Marsha Linehan, a psychologist at the University of Washington who was trying to treat deeply troubled patients with histories of suicidal behavior. “Trying to treat these patients with some change-based behavior therapy just made them worse, not better,” Dr. Linehan said in an interview. “With the really hard stuff, you need something else, something that allows people to tolerate these very strong emotions.”
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Craig Hunter, a science editor, discusses some of the topics in this week's Science Times.
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Learning How to Reflect (or Not) (May 27, 2008)
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Get Health News From The New York Times » In the 1990s, Dr. Linehan published a series of studies finding that a therapy that incorporated Zen Buddhist mindfulness, “radical acceptance,” practiced by therapist and patient significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and suicide attempts in the high-risk patients.
Finally, in 2000, a group of researchers including Dr. Segal in Toronto, J. Mark G. Williams at the University of Wales and John D. Teasdale at the Medical Research Council in England published a study that found that eight weekly sessions of mindfulness halved the rate of relapse in people with three or more episodes of depression.
With Dr. Kabat-Zinn, they wrote a popular book, “The Mindful Way Through Depression.” Psychotherapists’ curiosity about mindfulness, once tentative, turned into “this feeding frenzy, of sorts, that we have going on now,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn said.
Mindfulness meditation is easy to describe. Sit in a comfortable position, eyes closed, preferably with the back upright and unsupported. Relax and take note of body sensations, sounds and moods. Notice them without judgment. Let the mind settle into the rhythm of breathing. If it wanders (and it will), gently redirect attention to the breath. Stay with it for at least 10 minutes.
After mastering control of attention, some therapists say, a person can turn, mentally, to face a threatening or troubling thought — about, say, a strained relationship with a parent — and learn simply to endure the anger or sadness and let it pass, without lapsing into rumination or trying to change the feeling, a move that often backfires.
One woman, a doctor who had been in therapy for years to manage bouts of disabling anxiety, recently began seeing Gaea Logan, a therapist in Austin, Tex., who incorporates mindfulness meditation into her practice. This patient had plenty to worry about, including a mentally ill child, a divorce and what she described as a “harsh internal voice,” Ms. Logan said.
After practicing mindfulness meditation, she continued to feel anxious at times but told Ms. Logan, “I can stop and observe my feelings and thoughts and have compassion for myself.”
Steven Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada at Reno, has developed a talk therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy, or ACT, based on a similar, Buddha-like effort to move beyond language to change fundamental psychological processes.
“It’s a shift from having our mental health defined by the content of our thoughts,” Dr. Hayes said, “to having it defined by our relationship to that content — and changing that relationship by sitting with, noticing and becoming disentangled from our definition of ourselves.”
For all these hopeful signs, the science behind mindfulness is in its infancy. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which researches health practices, last year published a comprehensive review of meditation studies, including T.M., Zen and mindfulness practice, for a wide variety of physical and mental problems. The study found that over all, the research was too sketchy to draw conclusions.
A recent review by Canadian researchers, focusing specifically on mindfulness meditation, concluded that it did “not have a reliable effect on depression and anxiety.”
Therapists who incorporate mindfulness practices do not agree when the meditation is most useful, either. Some say Buddhist meditation is most useful for patients with moderate emotional problems. Others, like Dr. Linehan, insist that patients in severe mental distress are the best candidates for mindfulness.
A case in point is mindfulness-based therapy to prevent a relapse into depression. The treatment significantly reduced the risk of relapse in people who have had three or more episodes of depression. But it may have had the opposite effect on people who had one or two previous episodes, two studies suggest.
The mindfulness treatment “may be contraindicated for this group of patients,” S. Helen Ma and Dr. Teasdale of the Medical Research Council concluded in a 2004 study of the therapy.
Since mindfulness meditation may have different effects on different mental struggles, the challenge for its proponents will be to specify where it is most effective — and soon, given how popular the practice is becoming.
The question, said Linda Barnes, an associate professor of family medicine and pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, is not whether mindfulness meditation will become a sophisticated therapeutic technique or lapse into self-help cliché.
“The answer to that question is yes to both,” Dr. Barnes said.
The real issue, most researchers agree, is whether the science will keep pace and help people distinguish the mindful variety from the mindless.
A variety of meditative practices have been studied by Western researchers for their effects on mental and physical health.
Tai Chi
An active exercise, sometimes called moving meditation, involving extremely slow, continuous movement and extreme concentration. The movements are to balance the vital energy of the body but have no religious significance.
Studies are mixed, some finding it can reduce blood pressure in patients, and others finding no effect. There is some evidence that it can help elderly people improve balance.
Transcendental Meditation
Meditators sit comfortably, eyes closed, and breathe naturally. They repeat and concentrate on the mantra, a word or sound chosen by the instructor to achieve state of deep, transcendent absorption. Practitioners “lose” themselves, untouched by day-to-day concerns. Studies suggest it can reduce blood pressure in some patients.
Mindfulness Meditation
Practitioners find a comfortable position, close the eyes and focus first on breathing, passively observing it. If a stray thought or emotion enters the mind, they allow it to pass and return attention to the breath. The aim is to achieve focused awareness on what is happening moment to moment.
Studies find that it can help manage chronic pain. The findings are mixed on substance abuse. Two trials suggest that it can cut the rate of relapse in people who have had three or more bouts of depression.
Yoga
Enhanced awareness through breathing techniques and specific postures. Schools vary widely, aiming to achieve total absorption in the present and a release from ordinary thoughts. Studies are mixed, but evidence shows it can reduce stress.
BENEDICT CAREY
Published: May 27, 2008
The patient sat with his eyes closed, submerged in the rhythm of his own breathing, and after a while noticed that he was thinking about his troubled relationship with his father.
Jim Ross for The New York Times
ANXIETY AID Zindel Segal, a psychologist, demonstrating meditative therapy.
“I was able to be there, present for the pain,” he said, when the meditation session ended. “To just let it be what it was, without thinking it through.”
The therapist nodded.
“Acceptance is what it was,” he continued. “Just letting it be. Not trying to change anything.”
“That’s it,” the therapist said. “That’s it, and that’s big.”
This exercise in focused awareness and mental catch-and-release of emotions has become perhaps the most popular new psychotherapy technique of the past decade. Mindfulness meditation, as it is called, is rooted in the teachings of a fifth-century B.C. Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha. It is catching the attention of talk therapists of all stripes, including academic researchers, Freudian analysts in private practice and skeptics who see all the hallmarks of another fad.
For years, psychotherapists have worked to relieve suffering by reframing the content of patients’ thoughts, directly altering behavior or helping people gain insight into the subconscious sources of their despair and anxiety. The promise of mindfulness meditation is that it can help patients endure flash floods of emotion during the therapeutic process — and ultimately alter reactions to daily experience at a level that words cannot reach. “The interest in this has just taken off,” said Zindel Segal, a psychologist at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where the above group therapy session was taped. “And I think a big part of it is that more and more therapists are practicing some form of contemplation themselves and want to bring that into therapy.”
At workshops and conferences across the country, students, counselors and psychologists in private practice throng lectures on mindfulness. The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness techniques, up from 3 in 2000, to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, lift despair and reduce hot flashes.
Some proponents say Buddha’s arrival in psychotherapy signals a broader opening in the culture at large — a way to access deeper healing, a hidden path revealed.
Yet so far, the evidence that mindfulness meditation helps relieve psychiatric symptoms is thin, and in some cases, it may make people worse, some studies suggest. Many researchers now worry that the enthusiasm for Buddhist practice will run so far ahead of the science that this promising psychological tool could turn into another fad.
“I’m very open to the possibility that this approach could be effective, and it certainly should be studied,” said Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory. “What concerns me is the hype, the talk about changing the world, this allure of the guru that the field of psychotherapy has a tendency to cultivate.”
Buddhist meditation came to psychotherapy from mainstream academic medicine. In the 1970s, a graduate student in molecular biology, Jon Kabat-Zinn, intrigued by Buddhist ideas, adapted a version of its meditative practice that could be easily learned and studied. It was by design a secular version, extracted like a gemstone from the many-layered foundation of Buddhist teaching, which has sprouted a wide variety of sects and spiritual practices and attracted 350 million adherents worldwide.
In transcendental meditation and other types of meditation, practitioners seek to transcend or “lose” themselves. The goal of mindfulness meditation was different, to foster an awareness of every sensation as it unfolds in the moment.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn taught the practice to people suffering from chronic pain at the University of Massachusetts medical school. In the 1980s he published a series of studies demonstrating that two-hour courses, given once a week for eight weeks, reduced chronic pain more effectively than treatment as usual.
Word spread, discreetly at first. “I think that back then, other researchers had to be very careful when they talked about this, because they didn’t want to be seen as New Age weirdos,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn, now a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, said in an interview. “So they didn’t call it mindfulness or meditation. “After a while, we put enough studies out there that people became more comfortable with it.”
Lotus Therapy
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Single Page Reprints Share
DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkPublished: May 27, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
One person who noticed early on was Marsha Linehan, a psychologist at the University of Washington who was trying to treat deeply troubled patients with histories of suicidal behavior. “Trying to treat these patients with some change-based behavior therapy just made them worse, not better,” Dr. Linehan said in an interview. “With the really hard stuff, you need something else, something that allows people to tolerate these very strong emotions.”
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Craig Hunter, a science editor, discusses some of the topics in this week's Science Times.
Science Times Podcast (mp3)
Related
Learning How to Reflect (or Not) (May 27, 2008)
RSS Feed
Get Health News From The New York Times » In the 1990s, Dr. Linehan published a series of studies finding that a therapy that incorporated Zen Buddhist mindfulness, “radical acceptance,” practiced by therapist and patient significantly cut the risk of hospitalization and suicide attempts in the high-risk patients.
Finally, in 2000, a group of researchers including Dr. Segal in Toronto, J. Mark G. Williams at the University of Wales and John D. Teasdale at the Medical Research Council in England published a study that found that eight weekly sessions of mindfulness halved the rate of relapse in people with three or more episodes of depression.
With Dr. Kabat-Zinn, they wrote a popular book, “The Mindful Way Through Depression.” Psychotherapists’ curiosity about mindfulness, once tentative, turned into “this feeding frenzy, of sorts, that we have going on now,” Dr. Kabat-Zinn said.
Mindfulness meditation is easy to describe. Sit in a comfortable position, eyes closed, preferably with the back upright and unsupported. Relax and take note of body sensations, sounds and moods. Notice them without judgment. Let the mind settle into the rhythm of breathing. If it wanders (and it will), gently redirect attention to the breath. Stay with it for at least 10 minutes.
After mastering control of attention, some therapists say, a person can turn, mentally, to face a threatening or troubling thought — about, say, a strained relationship with a parent — and learn simply to endure the anger or sadness and let it pass, without lapsing into rumination or trying to change the feeling, a move that often backfires.
One woman, a doctor who had been in therapy for years to manage bouts of disabling anxiety, recently began seeing Gaea Logan, a therapist in Austin, Tex., who incorporates mindfulness meditation into her practice. This patient had plenty to worry about, including a mentally ill child, a divorce and what she described as a “harsh internal voice,” Ms. Logan said.
After practicing mindfulness meditation, she continued to feel anxious at times but told Ms. Logan, “I can stop and observe my feelings and thoughts and have compassion for myself.”
Steven Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada at Reno, has developed a talk therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy, or ACT, based on a similar, Buddha-like effort to move beyond language to change fundamental psychological processes.
“It’s a shift from having our mental health defined by the content of our thoughts,” Dr. Hayes said, “to having it defined by our relationship to that content — and changing that relationship by sitting with, noticing and becoming disentangled from our definition of ourselves.”
For all these hopeful signs, the science behind mindfulness is in its infancy. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which researches health practices, last year published a comprehensive review of meditation studies, including T.M., Zen and mindfulness practice, for a wide variety of physical and mental problems. The study found that over all, the research was too sketchy to draw conclusions.
A recent review by Canadian researchers, focusing specifically on mindfulness meditation, concluded that it did “not have a reliable effect on depression and anxiety.”
Therapists who incorporate mindfulness practices do not agree when the meditation is most useful, either. Some say Buddhist meditation is most useful for patients with moderate emotional problems. Others, like Dr. Linehan, insist that patients in severe mental distress are the best candidates for mindfulness.
A case in point is mindfulness-based therapy to prevent a relapse into depression. The treatment significantly reduced the risk of relapse in people who have had three or more episodes of depression. But it may have had the opposite effect on people who had one or two previous episodes, two studies suggest.
The mindfulness treatment “may be contraindicated for this group of patients,” S. Helen Ma and Dr. Teasdale of the Medical Research Council concluded in a 2004 study of the therapy.
Since mindfulness meditation may have different effects on different mental struggles, the challenge for its proponents will be to specify where it is most effective — and soon, given how popular the practice is becoming.
The question, said Linda Barnes, an associate professor of family medicine and pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, is not whether mindfulness meditation will become a sophisticated therapeutic technique or lapse into self-help cliché.
“The answer to that question is yes to both,” Dr. Barnes said.
The real issue, most researchers agree, is whether the science will keep pace and help people distinguish the mindful variety from the mindless.
A variety of meditative practices have been studied by Western researchers for their effects on mental and physical health.
Tai Chi
An active exercise, sometimes called moving meditation, involving extremely slow, continuous movement and extreme concentration. The movements are to balance the vital energy of the body but have no religious significance.
Studies are mixed, some finding it can reduce blood pressure in patients, and others finding no effect. There is some evidence that it can help elderly people improve balance.
Transcendental Meditation
Meditators sit comfortably, eyes closed, and breathe naturally. They repeat and concentrate on the mantra, a word or sound chosen by the instructor to achieve state of deep, transcendent absorption. Practitioners “lose” themselves, untouched by day-to-day concerns. Studies suggest it can reduce blood pressure in some patients.
Mindfulness Meditation
Practitioners find a comfortable position, close the eyes and focus first on breathing, passively observing it. If a stray thought or emotion enters the mind, they allow it to pass and return attention to the breath. The aim is to achieve focused awareness on what is happening moment to moment.
Studies find that it can help manage chronic pain. The findings are mixed on substance abuse. Two trials suggest that it can cut the rate of relapse in people who have had three or more bouts of depression.
Yoga
Enhanced awareness through breathing techniques and specific postures. Schools vary widely, aiming to achieve total absorption in the present and a release from ordinary thoughts. Studies are mixed, but evidence shows it can reduce stress.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Stress - And Yoga/Meditation can Help It
Adapted from Hindu.
The role of stress in just about everything Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. A study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. Thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood, says eurekalert press release.
The first clues to the link between stress and health were provided in the 1930s by Hans Selye, the first scientist to apply the word “stress”— then simply an engineering term— to the strains experienced by living organisms in their struggles to adapt and cope with changing environments.
One of Selye’s major discoveries was that the stress hormone cortisol had a long-term effect on the health of rats.
Cortisol has been considered one of the main culprits in the stress-illness connection, although it plays a necessary role in helping us cope with threats. When an animal perceives danger, a system kicks into gear: A chain reaction of signals releases various hormones — most notably epinephrine (“adrenaline”), norepinephrine, and cortisol — from the adrenal glands above each kidney.
These hormones boost heart rate, increase respiration, and increase the availability of glucose (cellular fuel) in the blood, thereby enabling the famous “fight or flight” reaction.
Because these responses take a lot of energy, cortisol simultaneously tells other costly physical processes — including digestion, reproduction, physical growth, and some aspects of the immune system — to shut or slow down.
When occasions to fight or flee are infrequent and threats pass quickly, the body’s stress thermostat adjusts accordingly: Cortisol levels return to baseline (it takes 40-60 minutes), the intestines resume digesting food, the sex organs kick back into gear, and the immune system resumes fighting infections.
But problems occur when stresses don’t let up —or when, for various reasons, the brain continually perceives stress even if it isn’t really there.
Stress begins with the perception of danger by the brain, and it appears that continued stress can actually bias the brain to perceive more danger by altering brain structures such as those which govern the perception of and response to threat. Prolonged exposure to cortisol inhibits the growth of new neurons, and can cause increased growth of the amygdala, the portion of the brain that controls fear and other emotional responses.
The end result is heightened expectation of and attention to threats in the environment. Stress hormones also inhibit neuron growth in parts of the hippocampus, a brain area essential in forming new memories. In this way, stress results in memory impairments and impairs the brain’s ability to put emotional memories in context.
Think of it this way: Too much stress and you forget not to be stressed out.
These brain changes are thought by some researchers to be at the heart of the link between stress and depression — one of stress’s most devastating health consequences — as well as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Although when we think of stressors we might think of big things like abuse, illness, divorce, grieving, or getting fired, it is now known that the little things — traffic, workplace politics, noisy neighbors, a long line at the bank — can add up and have a similar impact on our well-being and our health.
People who report more minor irritants in their lives also have more mental and physical health problems than those who encounter fewer hassles. And recent research shows that PTSD may be the result of stressors adding up like building blocks, remodeling the plastic brain in a cumulative rather than a once-and-for-all fashion.
But the best known of stress’s health impacts are on the heart.
The idea that stress directly causes coronary heart disease has been around since the 1950s; although once controversial, the direct stress-cardiac link is now well-documented by many studies. For instance, men who faced chronic stresses at work or at home ran a 30 percent higher likelihood of dying over the course of a nine-year study; in another study, individuals reporting neglect, abuse, or other stressors in childhood were over three times as likely as nonstressed individuals to develop heart disease in adulthood.
Adding insult to injury, stress may even have a selfperpetuating effect. Depression and heart disease, for example, are not only the results of stress, but also causes of (more) stress. Consequently, the chronically stressed body can appear less like a thermostat than like a wailing speaker placed too close to a microphone — a feedback loop in which the stress response goes out of control, hastening physical decline with age.
Growing evidence shows that our sensitivity to stress as adults is already “tuned,” so to speak, in infancy. Specifically, the amount of stress encountered in early life sensitizes an organism to a certain level of adversity; high levels of early life stress may result in hypersensitivity to stress later, as well as to adult depression.
A history of various stressors such as abuse and neglect in early life are a common feature of those with chronic depression in adulthood, for example.
At McGill University in Montreal, Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues have studied mother and infant rats, using rat maternal behavior as a model of early life stress and its later ramifications in humans. The key variable in the world of rat nurturance is licking and grooming. Offspring of rat mothers who naturally lick and groom their pups a lot are less easily startled as adults and show less fear of novel or threatening situations — in other words, less sensitivity to stress — than offspring of less nurturant mothers.
The same thing is true of offspring of naturally less nurturant mothers who are raised (or “cross-fostered”) by more nurturant ones. By the same token, low-licking-and-grooming rat mothers are themselves more fearful than the more nurturant rat moms; but again, female offspring of those non-nurturant mothers foster-parented by nurturant mothers show less fear and are themselves more nurturant when they have pups of their own.
This indicates that the connection between maternal nurturance and stress responsiveness is not simply genetic, but that fearfulness and nurturance are transmitted from generation to generation through maternal behavior.
The vicious cycle of stress hormones biasing us to perceive more threat and react with an increased stress response might seem like some kind perverse joke played by nature — or at least a serious design flaw in the brain. But it makes better sense if we take the brain out of its modern, urban, “civilized” context.
The stress response is a necessary response to danger.
For animals, including most likely our hominid ancestors, behavioral transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity from parents to offspring makes sense as an adaptation to fluctuating levels of danger in the environment.
Animals raised in chronically adverse conditions (e.g., high conflict, material deprivation) may expect more of the same in the near future; so in effect, the maternal treatment of offspring attunes them to the level of stress they may expect to encounter in their lives. As such, a response that seems baffling and counterproductive in a modern, civilized context may make more sense in the context of our distant evolutionary past.
Even depression has been theorized as playing an adaptive role in certain contexts.
The inactivity, lack of motivation, loss of interest in pleasurable activities like sex, and withdrawal from social relationships experienced by depressed people closely resemble “sickness behavior” — the energy-saving lethargy activated by the immune system in response to infection.
In a natural setting, the hopeless attitude of depression may be the most adaptive for an organism infected with a pathogen: The best strategy for survival is not to expend energy fruitlessly and become exposed to predators, but to hunker down, hide from threats, and direct energy to immune processes where it’s needed.
And it turns out that baboons suffer from depression and other stress-related disorders, just like people do. According to Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, who has studied stress in baboon troops, it is the relative safety from predators and high amounts of leisure time enjoyed by some primates — including humans — that has transformed these useful biological coping mechanisms into a source of pointless suffering and illness.
Besides heart disease, PTSD, and depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, adult-onset diabetes, growth problems, and even cancer. Chronic rises in stress hormones have been shown to accelerate the growth of precancerous cells and tumors; they also lower the body’s resistance to HIV and cancer-causing viruses like human papilloma virus (the precursor to cervical cancer in women).
The great challenge in stress psychology — and the necessary precursor to developing interventions against stress’s harmful effects — has been understanding the mechanisms by which thoughts and feelings and other “mental” stuff can affect bodily health.
For many years, it was believed that the main causal link between stress and disease was the immune suppression that occurs when the body redirects its energy toward the fight-or-flight response. But recent research has revealed a far more nuanced picture.
Stress is known to actually enhance one important immune response, inflammation, and increasingly this is being seen as the go-between in various stress-related diseases.
Ordinarily, inflammation is how the healthy body deals with damaged tissue: Cells at the site of infections or injuries produce signaling chemicals called cytokines, which in turn attract other immune cells to the site to help repair it. Cytokines also travel to the brain and are responsible for initiating sickness behavior. Overactive cytokine production has been found to put individuals at greater risk for a variety of aging-related illnesses.
Cytokines may be an important mediator in the relationship between stress and heart disease. When the arteries feeding the heart are damaged, cytokines induce more blood flow, and thus more white blood cells, to the site. White blood cells accumulate in vessel walls and, over time, become engorged with cholesterol, becoming plaques; these may later become destabilized and rupture, causing heart attacks.
Cytokine action also has been implicated in the link between stress and depression. People suffering from clinical depression have shown 40–50 percent higher concentrations of certain inflammatory cytokines. And about 50 percent of cancer patients whose immune responses are artificially boosted through the administration of cytokines show depressive symptoms.
The close connection between inflammation and both depression and heart disease has led some researchers to theorize that inflammation may be what mediates the two-way street between these two conditions: Depression can lead to heart disease, but heart disease also often leads to depression.
Sleep may be part of this puzzle too, as disturbed sleep, which often goes with anxiety and depression, increases levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the body.
Not everyone responds the same way to stress. Personality traits like negativity, pessimism, and neuroticism are known to be risk factors for stress-related disease, as are anger and hostility.
In the late 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman identified a major link between stress and health with their research on the “Type A” personality: a person who is highly competitive, aggressive, and impatient. This personality was found to be a strong predictor of heart disease, and later research clarified the picture: The salient factors in the relationship between the Type A personality and health are mainly anger, hostility, and a socially dominant personality style (for example, tending to interrupt other people while they are talking).
When negative emotions like anger are chronic, it is as if the body is in a constant state of fight or flight.
There is now evidence that another trait associated with success-striving in the modern world — persistence — may also lead to health problems in some circumstances. When goals are not readily attainable, the inability to detach from them may produce frustration, exhaustion, rumination on failures, and lack of sleep. These in turn activate harmful inflammatory responses that can lead to illness and lowered immunity.
Studies also have shown that optimistic people have lower incidence of heart disease, better prognosis after heart surgery, and longer life.
The effects of a positive attitude on immunity were shown in a study by Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University, and his colleagues, in which individuals were exposed to a cold virus in a laboratory setting and watched over six days. Those with a positive emotional style were less likely to develop colds than were individuals with low levels of positive affect. Positive affect was also found to be correlated with reduced symptom severity and reduced pain.
Personality and environmental factors are not the whole story when it comes to stress.
The next frontier of stress research is the rapidly growing field of behavioral genetics. Modeling the interaction of genetic and environmental influences is no longer a matter of weighing the relative input of nature and nurture. The two intertwine in subtle and complicated ways, with environments affecting gene expression, and vice versa, throughout life. Thus, the current watchword is “stress-diathesis” models, in which environmental stressors have varying impact on individuals due to preexisting inherited vulnerabilities.
One major advance in this area was the discovery by Avshalom Caspi, University of Wisconsin, and his colleagues of a link between stress sensitivity and a particular gene called 5HTTLPR. Findings suggest certain genetic makeup seems to increase the risk for a serious illness through the mechanism of increased sensitivity to stressful occurrences.
Nathan Fox, University of Maryland, and his colleagues subsequently reported that children with two short alleles of the 5HTTLPR gene, whose mothers also reported receiving low social support, were more likely to show behavioral inhibition (fearfulness and a tendency to withdraw) at age 7. Those receiving high support did not show the tendency, and those with the long alleles but receiving low support also appeared “protected” by their genetic makeup.
Genetic predisposition to stress sensitivity may in some cases become a self-fulfilling cycle. Fox and colleagues found that some very behaviorally inhibited children were regarded by their mothers as hard to soothe and received less care and sensitivity as a result; this in turn tuned up the child’s sensitivity to stress. In the model Fox and colleagues propose, genetically influenced temperament in early childhood influences the quality of caregiving children receive, which in turn shapes a child’s attention bias to threat.
But look on the bright side: The newly refined science of stress could lead to new drug therapies that can control stress or inhibit its effects on health. Also, depression and anxiety are not only results of stress, but also causes, and existing therapeutic and medical treatments for these conditions can help change how people perceive threats, put their life challenges in context, and cut stressors down to manageable size. The cycle doesn’t have to be vicious, in other words.
What’s more, the confirmation that the mind directly affects the body can work as much in our favor as it does to our detriment, as the personality-and-stress research above indicates.
As Carol Dweck, Stanford University, has argued, personality is mutable. In theory, if our outlooks and beliefs about ourselves can be changed, so can our vulnerability to life’s slings and arrows. Relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga, for example, have been confirmed to quell stress demons.
Even if you are a determined workaholic glued to your cell phone or a fearful and angry urban neurotic, stress-reduction methods are readily available to cope with stress in the short term and even alter perceptions of stressors in the long term. The bottom line: Stress is not inevitable.
Current Research on Stress:
At the University of Chicago, APS President John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley have studied the health effects of social isolation, an increasingly common malady in the modern world. Among their findings are that lonely older adults show more arterial stiffening and higher blood pressure than their nonlonely counterparts and that the association between loneliness and blood pressure increases with age.
In middle-aged and older adults (but not young adults), loneliness is associated with higher levels of epinephrine in the blood, and lonely people of all ages show elevated levels of cortisol. By desensitizing the mechanism whereby cortisol turns off more cortisol production, the social isolation frequently experienced by older adults may hasten physical decline. Lonely individuals of all ages also have poorer sleep than nonlonely people and therefore get less of sleep’s essential restorative benefits.
Humans and other social animals particularly seek the company of others when facing threats — both for safety and for social support. The general affiliative response — what Shelley Taylor, UCLA, has called “tending and befriending.” Oxytocin rises during times of separation or disrupted social relations. Just as the familiar “adrenaline rush” of epinephrine induces the familiar fight-or-flight reaction, it is oxytocin that causes us to desire company and social togetherness.
It may be especially important in females, reflecting their different reproductive and survival priorities from those of males — i.e., caregiving (tending offspring) and lessening social tensions through friendly overtures (befriending).
'Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences' by Robert Sapolsky
The role of stress in just about everything Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. A study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. Thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood, says eurekalert press release.
The first clues to the link between stress and health were provided in the 1930s by Hans Selye, the first scientist to apply the word “stress”— then simply an engineering term— to the strains experienced by living organisms in their struggles to adapt and cope with changing environments.
One of Selye’s major discoveries was that the stress hormone cortisol had a long-term effect on the health of rats.
Cortisol has been considered one of the main culprits in the stress-illness connection, although it plays a necessary role in helping us cope with threats. When an animal perceives danger, a system kicks into gear: A chain reaction of signals releases various hormones — most notably epinephrine (“adrenaline”), norepinephrine, and cortisol — from the adrenal glands above each kidney.
These hormones boost heart rate, increase respiration, and increase the availability of glucose (cellular fuel) in the blood, thereby enabling the famous “fight or flight” reaction.
Because these responses take a lot of energy, cortisol simultaneously tells other costly physical processes — including digestion, reproduction, physical growth, and some aspects of the immune system — to shut or slow down.
When occasions to fight or flee are infrequent and threats pass quickly, the body’s stress thermostat adjusts accordingly: Cortisol levels return to baseline (it takes 40-60 minutes), the intestines resume digesting food, the sex organs kick back into gear, and the immune system resumes fighting infections.
But problems occur when stresses don’t let up —or when, for various reasons, the brain continually perceives stress even if it isn’t really there.
Stress begins with the perception of danger by the brain, and it appears that continued stress can actually bias the brain to perceive more danger by altering brain structures such as those which govern the perception of and response to threat. Prolonged exposure to cortisol inhibits the growth of new neurons, and can cause increased growth of the amygdala, the portion of the brain that controls fear and other emotional responses.
The end result is heightened expectation of and attention to threats in the environment. Stress hormones also inhibit neuron growth in parts of the hippocampus, a brain area essential in forming new memories. In this way, stress results in memory impairments and impairs the brain’s ability to put emotional memories in context.
Think of it this way: Too much stress and you forget not to be stressed out.
These brain changes are thought by some researchers to be at the heart of the link between stress and depression — one of stress’s most devastating health consequences — as well as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Although when we think of stressors we might think of big things like abuse, illness, divorce, grieving, or getting fired, it is now known that the little things — traffic, workplace politics, noisy neighbors, a long line at the bank — can add up and have a similar impact on our well-being and our health.
People who report more minor irritants in their lives also have more mental and physical health problems than those who encounter fewer hassles. And recent research shows that PTSD may be the result of stressors adding up like building blocks, remodeling the plastic brain in a cumulative rather than a once-and-for-all fashion.
But the best known of stress’s health impacts are on the heart.
The idea that stress directly causes coronary heart disease has been around since the 1950s; although once controversial, the direct stress-cardiac link is now well-documented by many studies. For instance, men who faced chronic stresses at work or at home ran a 30 percent higher likelihood of dying over the course of a nine-year study; in another study, individuals reporting neglect, abuse, or other stressors in childhood were over three times as likely as nonstressed individuals to develop heart disease in adulthood.
Adding insult to injury, stress may even have a selfperpetuating effect. Depression and heart disease, for example, are not only the results of stress, but also causes of (more) stress. Consequently, the chronically stressed body can appear less like a thermostat than like a wailing speaker placed too close to a microphone — a feedback loop in which the stress response goes out of control, hastening physical decline with age.
Growing evidence shows that our sensitivity to stress as adults is already “tuned,” so to speak, in infancy. Specifically, the amount of stress encountered in early life sensitizes an organism to a certain level of adversity; high levels of early life stress may result in hypersensitivity to stress later, as well as to adult depression.
A history of various stressors such as abuse and neglect in early life are a common feature of those with chronic depression in adulthood, for example.
At McGill University in Montreal, Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues have studied mother and infant rats, using rat maternal behavior as a model of early life stress and its later ramifications in humans. The key variable in the world of rat nurturance is licking and grooming. Offspring of rat mothers who naturally lick and groom their pups a lot are less easily startled as adults and show less fear of novel or threatening situations — in other words, less sensitivity to stress — than offspring of less nurturant mothers.
The same thing is true of offspring of naturally less nurturant mothers who are raised (or “cross-fostered”) by more nurturant ones. By the same token, low-licking-and-grooming rat mothers are themselves more fearful than the more nurturant rat moms; but again, female offspring of those non-nurturant mothers foster-parented by nurturant mothers show less fear and are themselves more nurturant when they have pups of their own.
This indicates that the connection between maternal nurturance and stress responsiveness is not simply genetic, but that fearfulness and nurturance are transmitted from generation to generation through maternal behavior.
The vicious cycle of stress hormones biasing us to perceive more threat and react with an increased stress response might seem like some kind perverse joke played by nature — or at least a serious design flaw in the brain. But it makes better sense if we take the brain out of its modern, urban, “civilized” context.
The stress response is a necessary response to danger.
For animals, including most likely our hominid ancestors, behavioral transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity from parents to offspring makes sense as an adaptation to fluctuating levels of danger in the environment.
Animals raised in chronically adverse conditions (e.g., high conflict, material deprivation) may expect more of the same in the near future; so in effect, the maternal treatment of offspring attunes them to the level of stress they may expect to encounter in their lives. As such, a response that seems baffling and counterproductive in a modern, civilized context may make more sense in the context of our distant evolutionary past.
Even depression has been theorized as playing an adaptive role in certain contexts.
The inactivity, lack of motivation, loss of interest in pleasurable activities like sex, and withdrawal from social relationships experienced by depressed people closely resemble “sickness behavior” — the energy-saving lethargy activated by the immune system in response to infection.
In a natural setting, the hopeless attitude of depression may be the most adaptive for an organism infected with a pathogen: The best strategy for survival is not to expend energy fruitlessly and become exposed to predators, but to hunker down, hide from threats, and direct energy to immune processes where it’s needed.
And it turns out that baboons suffer from depression and other stress-related disorders, just like people do. According to Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, who has studied stress in baboon troops, it is the relative safety from predators and high amounts of leisure time enjoyed by some primates — including humans — that has transformed these useful biological coping mechanisms into a source of pointless suffering and illness.
Besides heart disease, PTSD, and depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, adult-onset diabetes, growth problems, and even cancer. Chronic rises in stress hormones have been shown to accelerate the growth of precancerous cells and tumors; they also lower the body’s resistance to HIV and cancer-causing viruses like human papilloma virus (the precursor to cervical cancer in women).
The great challenge in stress psychology — and the necessary precursor to developing interventions against stress’s harmful effects — has been understanding the mechanisms by which thoughts and feelings and other “mental” stuff can affect bodily health.
For many years, it was believed that the main causal link between stress and disease was the immune suppression that occurs when the body redirects its energy toward the fight-or-flight response. But recent research has revealed a far more nuanced picture.
Stress is known to actually enhance one important immune response, inflammation, and increasingly this is being seen as the go-between in various stress-related diseases.
Ordinarily, inflammation is how the healthy body deals with damaged tissue: Cells at the site of infections or injuries produce signaling chemicals called cytokines, which in turn attract other immune cells to the site to help repair it. Cytokines also travel to the brain and are responsible for initiating sickness behavior. Overactive cytokine production has been found to put individuals at greater risk for a variety of aging-related illnesses.
Cytokines may be an important mediator in the relationship between stress and heart disease. When the arteries feeding the heart are damaged, cytokines induce more blood flow, and thus more white blood cells, to the site. White blood cells accumulate in vessel walls and, over time, become engorged with cholesterol, becoming plaques; these may later become destabilized and rupture, causing heart attacks.
Cytokine action also has been implicated in the link between stress and depression. People suffering from clinical depression have shown 40–50 percent higher concentrations of certain inflammatory cytokines. And about 50 percent of cancer patients whose immune responses are artificially boosted through the administration of cytokines show depressive symptoms.
The close connection between inflammation and both depression and heart disease has led some researchers to theorize that inflammation may be what mediates the two-way street between these two conditions: Depression can lead to heart disease, but heart disease also often leads to depression.
Sleep may be part of this puzzle too, as disturbed sleep, which often goes with anxiety and depression, increases levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the body.
Not everyone responds the same way to stress. Personality traits like negativity, pessimism, and neuroticism are known to be risk factors for stress-related disease, as are anger and hostility.
In the late 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman identified a major link between stress and health with their research on the “Type A” personality: a person who is highly competitive, aggressive, and impatient. This personality was found to be a strong predictor of heart disease, and later research clarified the picture: The salient factors in the relationship between the Type A personality and health are mainly anger, hostility, and a socially dominant personality style (for example, tending to interrupt other people while they are talking).
When negative emotions like anger are chronic, it is as if the body is in a constant state of fight or flight.
There is now evidence that another trait associated with success-striving in the modern world — persistence — may also lead to health problems in some circumstances. When goals are not readily attainable, the inability to detach from them may produce frustration, exhaustion, rumination on failures, and lack of sleep. These in turn activate harmful inflammatory responses that can lead to illness and lowered immunity.
Studies also have shown that optimistic people have lower incidence of heart disease, better prognosis after heart surgery, and longer life.
The effects of a positive attitude on immunity were shown in a study by Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University, and his colleagues, in which individuals were exposed to a cold virus in a laboratory setting and watched over six days. Those with a positive emotional style were less likely to develop colds than were individuals with low levels of positive affect. Positive affect was also found to be correlated with reduced symptom severity and reduced pain.
Personality and environmental factors are not the whole story when it comes to stress.
The next frontier of stress research is the rapidly growing field of behavioral genetics. Modeling the interaction of genetic and environmental influences is no longer a matter of weighing the relative input of nature and nurture. The two intertwine in subtle and complicated ways, with environments affecting gene expression, and vice versa, throughout life. Thus, the current watchword is “stress-diathesis” models, in which environmental stressors have varying impact on individuals due to preexisting inherited vulnerabilities.
One major advance in this area was the discovery by Avshalom Caspi, University of Wisconsin, and his colleagues of a link between stress sensitivity and a particular gene called 5HTTLPR. Findings suggest certain genetic makeup seems to increase the risk for a serious illness through the mechanism of increased sensitivity to stressful occurrences.
Nathan Fox, University of Maryland, and his colleagues subsequently reported that children with two short alleles of the 5HTTLPR gene, whose mothers also reported receiving low social support, were more likely to show behavioral inhibition (fearfulness and a tendency to withdraw) at age 7. Those receiving high support did not show the tendency, and those with the long alleles but receiving low support also appeared “protected” by their genetic makeup.
Genetic predisposition to stress sensitivity may in some cases become a self-fulfilling cycle. Fox and colleagues found that some very behaviorally inhibited children were regarded by their mothers as hard to soothe and received less care and sensitivity as a result; this in turn tuned up the child’s sensitivity to stress. In the model Fox and colleagues propose, genetically influenced temperament in early childhood influences the quality of caregiving children receive, which in turn shapes a child’s attention bias to threat.
But look on the bright side: The newly refined science of stress could lead to new drug therapies that can control stress or inhibit its effects on health. Also, depression and anxiety are not only results of stress, but also causes, and existing therapeutic and medical treatments for these conditions can help change how people perceive threats, put their life challenges in context, and cut stressors down to manageable size. The cycle doesn’t have to be vicious, in other words.
What’s more, the confirmation that the mind directly affects the body can work as much in our favor as it does to our detriment, as the personality-and-stress research above indicates.
As Carol Dweck, Stanford University, has argued, personality is mutable. In theory, if our outlooks and beliefs about ourselves can be changed, so can our vulnerability to life’s slings and arrows. Relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga, for example, have been confirmed to quell stress demons.
Even if you are a determined workaholic glued to your cell phone or a fearful and angry urban neurotic, stress-reduction methods are readily available to cope with stress in the short term and even alter perceptions of stressors in the long term. The bottom line: Stress is not inevitable.
Current Research on Stress:
At the University of Chicago, APS President John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley have studied the health effects of social isolation, an increasingly common malady in the modern world. Among their findings are that lonely older adults show more arterial stiffening and higher blood pressure than their nonlonely counterparts and that the association between loneliness and blood pressure increases with age.
In middle-aged and older adults (but not young adults), loneliness is associated with higher levels of epinephrine in the blood, and lonely people of all ages show elevated levels of cortisol. By desensitizing the mechanism whereby cortisol turns off more cortisol production, the social isolation frequently experienced by older adults may hasten physical decline. Lonely individuals of all ages also have poorer sleep than nonlonely people and therefore get less of sleep’s essential restorative benefits.
Humans and other social animals particularly seek the company of others when facing threats — both for safety and for social support. The general affiliative response — what Shelley Taylor, UCLA, has called “tending and befriending.” Oxytocin rises during times of separation or disrupted social relations. Just as the familiar “adrenaline rush” of epinephrine induces the familiar fight-or-flight reaction, it is oxytocin that causes us to desire company and social togetherness.
It may be especially important in females, reflecting their different reproductive and survival priorities from those of males — i.e., caregiving (tending offspring) and lessening social tensions through friendly overtures (befriending).
'Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences' by Robert Sapolsky
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Hyperbaric Pure Oxygen Therapy and Yoga
Hyper - Means More
Bar - Means Pressure
Ic - Suffix for Adjective
Oxygen, in moderation like all other things that the body needs and consumes, is the elixir of life and the one of the most important ingredients needed for cell metabolism (if not convinced - to sustain growth, repair, defense mechanism and supply energy for different functional systems, like Skeletal, Muscular, Digestive, Immune, Nervous, Autonomous, Endocrine, Sympathetic, Para-sympathetic, Lymphatic, Reproductive, Excretory, Respiratory, Vision, Hearing, Tasting, Smelling, Tasting and Touch Senses and associated Motor Controls).
Wish someone had told me this 11 years back, when my son had a head injury where he lost 1/3 brain from 3 places (Glascow Coma Scale was 3 - which means technical death). Luckily I was told to teach him Yoga/Pranayama, which I did for last 7 years.
Feel sick of the so called practising doctors, specially in the US, who cage themselves in their limited speciality and their limited domain of second-hand knowledge taught till they become a licensed doctor, with no willingness to learn newer things, do research, be open and expand their knowledge - and more concerned ONLY with making MAXIMUM money (of course not all doctors are like that).
Spread the word please. Yoga has something close to this called Kapalbhati, Bhastrika and Sheersh Aasan or Head Stand (but not meant for people with head injury till blood vessels heal, clot removed, and swelling/edema is gone, and people with Heart, Blood Pressure, Hernia, Pulmonary, Middle and Inner Ear, Vertigo, Dizziness, and Eye/Retina/Glucoma issues should be careful).
I cured my severe Auto Immune Disorder for last 11 years, with some special advanced Pranyanma, breathing exercises, (combination of Kapalbhati and Kleva Kumbha - cessation of Mechanical Inhalation and Exhalation AND not Metabolic Breathing, but I would write more in detail later as I am still researching) and told some experts, but they refused to promote studying my approach or me. I had even tried Radiation and Chemo Therapy options for some years.
The last option was to use Biologics (which are noting but targeted amino-acids and proteins which combine with some part of biochemicals and cells in the body) but with no assurance for cure and risk of more and intense flareups and with side effects.
The Drug Companies would make approx $24K per patient per year on Biologics to treat Cancer,Tumors and other Auto Immune Issues. Then the Professional Sports Cheer Leaders (we should know what is the main criteria for this profession) turned Sales Reps working for these medical companies, visit these doctors, panning all kind of incentives and services (as per CBS 60 minutes or ABC 20/20) to push out all cures for all known and unknown diseases (heard of Shaking Leg Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Hyper Activity, Yellow Nails Syndrome (because of some bacteria under the nails), Growling So mach Syndrome, Excess Flatulence Syndrome (I see it coming), Restless Sleep Syndrome, and so on. You name any problem, and the promise to cure you is with them - with all listed side effects for which you need more cure and medicine!
A self perpetuating cycle for rest of your life and mind-set setting in the cultural tone of a modern society. A belief perpetuated over years that you can do any thing crazy, like sleep little, eat junk, canned, preserved, ready-made and unhealthy foods, stress out, consume toxins, live an unhealthy life style, live in recirculated air heating/cooling systems and not take fresh air next to plants and trees in the day time, do not exercise, be worried, and not happy and content, and expect to live healthy years based on their medicines!
Then they fund academic research to self-promote their products and shutting down alternate and better approaches pushed by the puritan and altruist researchers and doctors, which may be relatively free, but which would hurt the sales of their products.
Where it could be used:
a. Burn and Skin Graft Patients
b. Healing obstinate wounds, specially people with Diabetes.
c. Traumatic Head Injury
d. Cerebral Palsy
e. Stroke Patients
f. Viral/Bacterial Infections, specially of Pulmonary track
g. Gangrene and other flesh eating bacterial infections.
h. Autism
i. Dementia
j. Anemia
m. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
n. Gas Embolism and Decompression Sickness (trapped air/gases in parts of body)
o. Osteomylitis (bacterial bone marrow infection)
p: Skin Disorders
The list goes on.
How does it work:
a. Saturates Red Blood Cells oxygen transport capacity
b. Use Blood Plasma to transport extra oxygen
c. Increases Stem Cells production in the Bone Marrow, as per some research (Stem Cells become differentiated into different type of cells and are an important factor for the repair and growth process).
d. Increases Oxygen Pressure Differential and Oxygen Saturation, which increases Osmosis caused Osmotic Pressure across cell membranes in lungs and others parts of body, and thus increasing Oxygen transportation and delivery efficiency. And perhaps because of increased oxygen pressure (molecules are more dynamic and colliding with each other and hence getting loosely coupled at molecular and atomic levels - notice the sea side air being different), transient Oxygen Radicals are formed, which help the Cell Metabolism and Nervous System Conductivity, because of Increased Ionic Potential across cell membranes and synapses. Please note like Oxygen and other chemicals, Radicals are also useful for body, otherwise a lot of Biochemistry and Metabolism will not work.
e. Improve and help growth of blood vessels, and eventually other tissues, specially in brain.
f. Dead/Inactive/Dying Cells may revive - specially Gallic Cells in the Brain as per some paper.
For more info:
http://www.harchhyperbarics.com/
http://www.ihausa.org/
http://www.emedicine.com/plastic/topic526.htm
Bar - Means Pressure
Ic - Suffix for Adjective
Oxygen, in moderation like all other things that the body needs and consumes, is the elixir of life and the one of the most important ingredients needed for cell metabolism (if not convinced - to sustain growth, repair, defense mechanism and supply energy for different functional systems, like Skeletal, Muscular, Digestive, Immune, Nervous, Autonomous, Endocrine, Sympathetic, Para-sympathetic, Lymphatic, Reproductive, Excretory, Respiratory, Vision, Hearing, Tasting, Smelling, Tasting and Touch Senses and associated Motor Controls).
Wish someone had told me this 11 years back, when my son had a head injury where he lost 1/3 brain from 3 places (Glascow Coma Scale was 3 - which means technical death). Luckily I was told to teach him Yoga/Pranayama, which I did for last 7 years.
Feel sick of the so called practising doctors, specially in the US, who cage themselves in their limited speciality and their limited domain of second-hand knowledge taught till they become a licensed doctor, with no willingness to learn newer things, do research, be open and expand their knowledge - and more concerned ONLY with making MAXIMUM money (of course not all doctors are like that).
Spread the word please. Yoga has something close to this called Kapalbhati, Bhastrika and Sheersh Aasan or Head Stand (but not meant for people with head injury till blood vessels heal, clot removed, and swelling/edema is gone, and people with Heart, Blood Pressure, Hernia, Pulmonary, Middle and Inner Ear, Vertigo, Dizziness, and Eye/Retina/Glucoma issues should be careful).
I cured my severe Auto Immune Disorder for last 11 years, with some special advanced Pranyanma, breathing exercises, (combination of Kapalbhati and Kleva Kumbha - cessation of Mechanical Inhalation and Exhalation AND not Metabolic Breathing, but I would write more in detail later as I am still researching) and told some experts, but they refused to promote studying my approach or me. I had even tried Radiation and Chemo Therapy options for some years.
The last option was to use Biologics (which are noting but targeted amino-acids and proteins which combine with some part of biochemicals and cells in the body) but with no assurance for cure and risk of more and intense flareups and with side effects.
The Drug Companies would make approx $24K per patient per year on Biologics to treat Cancer,Tumors and other Auto Immune Issues. Then the Professional Sports Cheer Leaders (we should know what is the main criteria for this profession) turned Sales Reps working for these medical companies, visit these doctors, panning all kind of incentives and services (as per CBS 60 minutes or ABC 20/20) to push out all cures for all known and unknown diseases (heard of Shaking Leg Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, Hyper Activity, Yellow Nails Syndrome (because of some bacteria under the nails), Growling So mach Syndrome, Excess Flatulence Syndrome (I see it coming), Restless Sleep Syndrome, and so on. You name any problem, and the promise to cure you is with them - with all listed side effects for which you need more cure and medicine!
A self perpetuating cycle for rest of your life and mind-set setting in the cultural tone of a modern society. A belief perpetuated over years that you can do any thing crazy, like sleep little, eat junk, canned, preserved, ready-made and unhealthy foods, stress out, consume toxins, live an unhealthy life style, live in recirculated air heating/cooling systems and not take fresh air next to plants and trees in the day time, do not exercise, be worried, and not happy and content, and expect to live healthy years based on their medicines!
Then they fund academic research to self-promote their products and shutting down alternate and better approaches pushed by the puritan and altruist researchers and doctors, which may be relatively free, but which would hurt the sales of their products.
Where it could be used:
a. Burn and Skin Graft Patients
b. Healing obstinate wounds, specially people with Diabetes.
c. Traumatic Head Injury
d. Cerebral Palsy
e. Stroke Patients
f. Viral/Bacterial Infections, specially of Pulmonary track
g. Gangrene and other flesh eating bacterial infections.
h. Autism
i. Dementia
j. Anemia
m. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
n. Gas Embolism and Decompression Sickness (trapped air/gases in parts of body)
o. Osteomylitis (bacterial bone marrow infection)
p: Skin Disorders
The list goes on.
How does it work:
a. Saturates Red Blood Cells oxygen transport capacity
b. Use Blood Plasma to transport extra oxygen
c. Increases Stem Cells production in the Bone Marrow, as per some research (Stem Cells become differentiated into different type of cells and are an important factor for the repair and growth process).
d. Increases Oxygen Pressure Differential and Oxygen Saturation, which increases Osmosis caused Osmotic Pressure across cell membranes in lungs and others parts of body, and thus increasing Oxygen transportation and delivery efficiency. And perhaps because of increased oxygen pressure (molecules are more dynamic and colliding with each other and hence getting loosely coupled at molecular and atomic levels - notice the sea side air being different), transient Oxygen Radicals are formed, which help the Cell Metabolism and Nervous System Conductivity, because of Increased Ionic Potential across cell membranes and synapses. Please note like Oxygen and other chemicals, Radicals are also useful for body, otherwise a lot of Biochemistry and Metabolism will not work.
e. Improve and help growth of blood vessels, and eventually other tissues, specially in brain.
f. Dead/Inactive/Dying Cells may revive - specially Gallic Cells in the Brain as per some paper.
For more info:
http://www.harchhyperbarics.com/
http://www.ihausa.org/
http://www.emedicine.com/plastic/topic526.htm
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Eight Limbs in Astanga Yoga
I am still a practising student of Yoga and feel unfit to speak some of these things but for the sake of completion I am posting this.
Yoga is, according to Patanjali, "ChittoVritti Nirodhah", meaning cessation of mind modifications - mental tossing. But one can not control the mind, if one has not mastered control over his body! So this is very important that one has control over body as well, and for that a healthy body is very essential.
Once someone has learnt to control his mind, he masters control over his involuntary and autonomous metabolic functions! But before that, one has to learn to control his voluntary system!
Imagine, you can command yourself to sleep, to excrete, to urinate, to pass gas, to lower Blood Pressure, to get rid of your headaches and migraines! Why it is important to pass gas, excrete and urinate at will - atleast to some effect! Any waste product should not be retained for long in the body as it acts like toxins to the body, causing harmful effects.
In fact modern medicine and science is slowly realizing that the ancients wisdom of Yoga has direct medical benefits based on scientific principles. But not all is yet realized by them, as Yoga was a lost science till Dr. Sivananda revived it and made it famous throughout the world 60 years back! Still I feel that not many people have yet realized its powers, including so called many Yogis. This is because there is so much you can do and learn based on your personal experimentation!
One can cure diseases like Insomnia, Apnea, Blood Pressure and even some immune disorders, as I have cured all of them to most extent- though I suffered the Sleep Disorders for last 35 years, Immune Disorder for last 11 years, and Blood Pressure hitting 215/115 and not coming in control with 3 medications! Most of the diseases are present in the body because the natural cycle and the balance of the microcosm system in the body has gone awry. This can happen because of the imbalance in environment we live in, improper balanced food we eat, too little or too much sleep, emotional instability, mental stress and agitation, spiritual disconnect and lack of adequate exercise.
So the eight steps are for some very important reasons, are spelled out by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra. Without a character and an ethical and moral framework, one can not achieve the maximum benefits of Yoga.
1. Yama - Restraints
a. Ahimsa - Non Violence and Non Injury at Physical, Mental, Emotional level. Hear nothing Negative, say nothing Negative, and speak nothing Negative. Negative energy inside and outside is as harmful as sitting in a radioactive room! Yes it is easier said than done, but one must always strive! I am guilty of it and not feel justified in mentioning it. But over years, I see this makes you a better person, more calmer, more at peace and more happier and contended.
b. Satya - Truth-full-ness, Non Telling of Lies - Science has shown that the brain has to work harder when one lies! You burn your fuel and pollute your system twice than what is required!!Yes the modern society is not conducive to this value system and encourages you to lie. So try to find your balance!
c. Brahmacharya - Chastity, Sublimation of the Sexual Energy. Like Hunger, Thirst, Mind Oscillations, one has a tough time controlling sensual desires, specially when a provocation happens at sensory levels. The idea here is to keep this to minimal and not be crazy, possessive or carried in sway about it.
d. Asteya - Non Stealing, Non Covetousness, Lack of Jealousy. We do not want out conscience to be haunting us - that is if you have a conscience! Some of us may have a conscience surrounded and built on false values, result in all justifications!!
e. Aparigraha - Non accepting of gifts or bribes in exchange of expected favour or services to be returned. Basically this reduces anxiety and expectations - like one doing one's duty without the ego of "I", without attachment to the outcome and having expectations, and as a service to the Divine.
2. Niyama - Observations
a. Saucha - Purity Internal and External, which is part of body hygiene, environmental cleanness and lack of pollution, and purity of mind.
b. Santosha - Contentment. If we are not contended, we are unhappy and angry, which is not good for the body and mind. We get tied to a very narrow perspective and forget that all that is here, good or bad, shall also pass! There is nothing permanent and at end everyone dies here and leaves! That is why identification with the Soul or First Principle, and not with Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego helps, and one sees the Eternity in the Self. Please see my posting on Atom and Atma.
c. Tapas - Austerity. We should not ask a lot for ourselves from the environment and others. If everyone says, "I want more and more", we can see the limited resources of the nature being challenged and destroyed, and conflicts arising. Man is the biggest beast who has killed most of the animals on the planet and ruining the planet earth for his selfish gains. It looks like we are on an inevitable collision course with the inevitable - that I am afraid is going to be unthinkable and indigestible for most of us - as we are ruled by the same power hungry people and nations, who want "more and more".
d. Swaadhyaa - Self Study on Scriptural Knowledge. This does include books of knowledge in any field that benefits mankind, the Nature and the Self.
e. Ishwara-Pra-Ni-Dhaana - Surrender to the Divine. In Gita it says that when one is equipoise in heat and cold, in happiness and sorrow, among foes and friends, and in fortunes and misfortunes is a realized person. This comes when one stops identifying with the Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego and identifies himself with the Divine Principle - the Self or the Brahman. Become like "a leaf in the wind" or "a fish in the universal aquarium", where it does not matter where you are, as you always part and parcel of the Divine Principle in whatever form you are!! Please see my posting on Atom and Atma.
3. Pranayama
Control of Vital Life Energy through different breathing exercises mentioned in Yoga. This is a field by itself and one will learn new things as one practices this over time. The Anatomy Of Metabolic Respiration, The Anatomy Of Mechnical Respiration, and Kapal Bhati Steps And Its Medical Benefits.
4. Aasana
Different postures and locks which create pressure points, stretch and massage different parts of the body. Pressure points help stimulate nervous plexus centers, or chakras and also has a "squeezing effect" on different parts of the body in disposing waste deposits, speeding up excretion of gastric juices, harmones, and neuro transmitters. Stretching helps blood rush in and increasing blood flow, hence improving cellular metabolism and also exercising the cardio-vascular and the respiration system. Please see my post on Anatomy Of Metabolic Respiration.
5. Pratyahara - Withdrawl
This is for the spiritual seekers who want to experience the Essential Truth - The First Principle, that goes by many names, The Divinity, God, Brahman, Shiva, etc. What it means is that one has to evolute by involution as part of his evolutionary growth, by involution of his mind from the sensory world to the inner world of the soul. In order to conquest the Senses, Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego and feel eternally Peaceful, Happy and Blissfull, one needs to withdraw till one masters control over Mind, and then can still operate in the Material World. It is also called Uparatii.
6. Dharana - Concentration
This is single minded focus on any material, mental, emotional or spiritual object. It could be Sound, Picture, Smell, Some Positive Thought, Longing for Lord or Soul, Mantra, AUM, or any spiritual object of admiration, like Cross, Star of David, etc. In Tantra, Yantra, Tantra, Mantra, and Mandala are employed.
Breathing plays a very important part in this step. Sometimes the intensity of the mind is so strong in positive direction of achieving this goal, that it automatically happens. Sometimes, one has to use Pranayama to control the mind, and transcend the mind. It is very rare and difficult to transcend the mind without breath control unless one has such a wonderful longing and desire of the object of focus that it happens by itself.
All creative efforts, like Painters, Singers, Dancers, Thinkers, Scientists, Philosophers get this moment unconsciously in their "Ah" moment. Among the spiritual seekers, this is called the Rapture moment, where one experiences
7. Dhyana - Meditation
This is a very advance stage where one has transcended the mind, has perfect control over it, is beyond sorrow and happiness, is equipoise among friends and foes, takes success and failures, pleasant and unpleasant with same positive attitude. He is in constant remembrance of the First Principle - The Lord, and it need not be with eyes closed, though very difficult.
One can do open eye meditation by looking at presence of the same First Principle in all the forms and shapes, and animate or inanimate. Some people, can tune in to their breath, and feel the breath come in and go - and do a silent chant mentally saying "So Ham" - "I Am That", the First Principle. Note that when you breath in, the sound "So" is naturally made, and when you breath out, the sound "Ham" is naturally made.
People who have reached the Kevla Kumbha stage, which itself has many degrees of advancement, they can constantly retain and hold their breath - it does not mean that they are not taking oxygen, but they are taking minimally that comes in contact with the nostrils, without the diaphragm, chest, collar, throat or nostrils doing any inhalation or exhalation. In a very advance stage, one may just sense the subtle current of the air, like a whirl-pool of inward and outward motions, more like circulatory ones, at the tip of the nose, or in middle of the nose or in the upper nose, near the third eye. Some practitioners may develop some flap which would open and close when a "molecule" of air is allowed to flow in beyond in their meditation.
8. Samadhi
This is for the Spiritual Seekers who believe in the constant and repeating cycle of Death and Dirth and want to get liberation from this cycle. This is called "Moksha".
This seems to be Vikalpa and Nirvikalpa Samadhi. The earlier one is with the thought and the later one is without the thought. Vikalpa Samadhi is also called Sahita Samadhi - or added Samadhi.
This stage is all text book knowledge to me and I do not know anything about this stage.
While the sequence of the steps are important, it does not mean that one has to get a 100% mastery in one step and then go the next step.
There is nothing like a "black" and "white" demarcation, and this journey is iterative and running along many parallel tracks.
Yoga is, according to Patanjali, "ChittoVritti Nirodhah", meaning cessation of mind modifications - mental tossing. But one can not control the mind, if one has not mastered control over his body! So this is very important that one has control over body as well, and for that a healthy body is very essential.
Once someone has learnt to control his mind, he masters control over his involuntary and autonomous metabolic functions! But before that, one has to learn to control his voluntary system!
Imagine, you can command yourself to sleep, to excrete, to urinate, to pass gas, to lower Blood Pressure, to get rid of your headaches and migraines! Why it is important to pass gas, excrete and urinate at will - atleast to some effect! Any waste product should not be retained for long in the body as it acts like toxins to the body, causing harmful effects.
In fact modern medicine and science is slowly realizing that the ancients wisdom of Yoga has direct medical benefits based on scientific principles. But not all is yet realized by them, as Yoga was a lost science till Dr. Sivananda revived it and made it famous throughout the world 60 years back! Still I feel that not many people have yet realized its powers, including so called many Yogis. This is because there is so much you can do and learn based on your personal experimentation!
One can cure diseases like Insomnia, Apnea, Blood Pressure and even some immune disorders, as I have cured all of them to most extent- though I suffered the Sleep Disorders for last 35 years, Immune Disorder for last 11 years, and Blood Pressure hitting 215/115 and not coming in control with 3 medications! Most of the diseases are present in the body because the natural cycle and the balance of the microcosm system in the body has gone awry. This can happen because of the imbalance in environment we live in, improper balanced food we eat, too little or too much sleep, emotional instability, mental stress and agitation, spiritual disconnect and lack of adequate exercise.
So the eight steps are for some very important reasons, are spelled out by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra. Without a character and an ethical and moral framework, one can not achieve the maximum benefits of Yoga.
1. Yama - Restraints
a. Ahimsa - Non Violence and Non Injury at Physical, Mental, Emotional level. Hear nothing Negative, say nothing Negative, and speak nothing Negative. Negative energy inside and outside is as harmful as sitting in a radioactive room! Yes it is easier said than done, but one must always strive! I am guilty of it and not feel justified in mentioning it. But over years, I see this makes you a better person, more calmer, more at peace and more happier and contended.
b. Satya - Truth-full-ness, Non Telling of Lies - Science has shown that the brain has to work harder when one lies! You burn your fuel and pollute your system twice than what is required!!Yes the modern society is not conducive to this value system and encourages you to lie. So try to find your balance!
c. Brahmacharya - Chastity, Sublimation of the Sexual Energy. Like Hunger, Thirst, Mind Oscillations, one has a tough time controlling sensual desires, specially when a provocation happens at sensory levels. The idea here is to keep this to minimal and not be crazy, possessive or carried in sway about it.
d. Asteya - Non Stealing, Non Covetousness, Lack of Jealousy. We do not want out conscience to be haunting us - that is if you have a conscience! Some of us may have a conscience surrounded and built on false values, result in all justifications!!
e. Aparigraha - Non accepting of gifts or bribes in exchange of expected favour or services to be returned. Basically this reduces anxiety and expectations - like one doing one's duty without the ego of "I", without attachment to the outcome and having expectations, and as a service to the Divine.
2. Niyama - Observations
a. Saucha - Purity Internal and External, which is part of body hygiene, environmental cleanness and lack of pollution, and purity of mind.
b. Santosha - Contentment. If we are not contended, we are unhappy and angry, which is not good for the body and mind. We get tied to a very narrow perspective and forget that all that is here, good or bad, shall also pass! There is nothing permanent and at end everyone dies here and leaves! That is why identification with the Soul or First Principle, and not with Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego helps, and one sees the Eternity in the Self. Please see my posting on Atom and Atma.
c. Tapas - Austerity. We should not ask a lot for ourselves from the environment and others. If everyone says, "I want more and more", we can see the limited resources of the nature being challenged and destroyed, and conflicts arising. Man is the biggest beast who has killed most of the animals on the planet and ruining the planet earth for his selfish gains. It looks like we are on an inevitable collision course with the inevitable - that I am afraid is going to be unthinkable and indigestible for most of us - as we are ruled by the same power hungry people and nations, who want "more and more".
d. Swaadhyaa - Self Study on Scriptural Knowledge. This does include books of knowledge in any field that benefits mankind, the Nature and the Self.
e. Ishwara-Pra-Ni-Dhaana - Surrender to the Divine. In Gita it says that when one is equipoise in heat and cold, in happiness and sorrow, among foes and friends, and in fortunes and misfortunes is a realized person. This comes when one stops identifying with the Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego and identifies himself with the Divine Principle - the Self or the Brahman. Become like "a leaf in the wind" or "a fish in the universal aquarium", where it does not matter where you are, as you always part and parcel of the Divine Principle in whatever form you are!! Please see my posting on Atom and Atma.
3. Pranayama
Control of Vital Life Energy through different breathing exercises mentioned in Yoga. This is a field by itself and one will learn new things as one practices this over time. The Anatomy Of Metabolic Respiration, The Anatomy Of Mechnical Respiration, and Kapal Bhati Steps And Its Medical Benefits.
4. Aasana
Different postures and locks which create pressure points, stretch and massage different parts of the body. Pressure points help stimulate nervous plexus centers, or chakras and also has a "squeezing effect" on different parts of the body in disposing waste deposits, speeding up excretion of gastric juices, harmones, and neuro transmitters. Stretching helps blood rush in and increasing blood flow, hence improving cellular metabolism and also exercising the cardio-vascular and the respiration system. Please see my post on Anatomy Of Metabolic Respiration.
5. Pratyahara - Withdrawl
This is for the spiritual seekers who want to experience the Essential Truth - The First Principle, that goes by many names, The Divinity, God, Brahman, Shiva, etc. What it means is that one has to evolute by involution as part of his evolutionary growth, by involution of his mind from the sensory world to the inner world of the soul. In order to conquest the Senses, Body, Mind, Intellect and Ego and feel eternally Peaceful, Happy and Blissfull, one needs to withdraw till one masters control over Mind, and then can still operate in the Material World. It is also called Uparatii.
6. Dharana - Concentration
This is single minded focus on any material, mental, emotional or spiritual object. It could be Sound, Picture, Smell, Some Positive Thought, Longing for Lord or Soul, Mantra, AUM, or any spiritual object of admiration, like Cross, Star of David, etc. In Tantra, Yantra, Tantra, Mantra, and Mandala are employed.
Breathing plays a very important part in this step. Sometimes the intensity of the mind is so strong in positive direction of achieving this goal, that it automatically happens. Sometimes, one has to use Pranayama to control the mind, and transcend the mind. It is very rare and difficult to transcend the mind without breath control unless one has such a wonderful longing and desire of the object of focus that it happens by itself.
All creative efforts, like Painters, Singers, Dancers, Thinkers, Scientists, Philosophers get this moment unconsciously in their "Ah" moment. Among the spiritual seekers, this is called the Rapture moment, where one experiences
7. Dhyana - Meditation
This is a very advance stage where one has transcended the mind, has perfect control over it, is beyond sorrow and happiness, is equipoise among friends and foes, takes success and failures, pleasant and unpleasant with same positive attitude. He is in constant remembrance of the First Principle - The Lord, and it need not be with eyes closed, though very difficult.
One can do open eye meditation by looking at presence of the same First Principle in all the forms and shapes, and animate or inanimate. Some people, can tune in to their breath, and feel the breath come in and go - and do a silent chant mentally saying "So Ham" - "I Am That", the First Principle. Note that when you breath in, the sound "So" is naturally made, and when you breath out, the sound "Ham" is naturally made.
People who have reached the Kevla Kumbha stage, which itself has many degrees of advancement, they can constantly retain and hold their breath - it does not mean that they are not taking oxygen, but they are taking minimally that comes in contact with the nostrils, without the diaphragm, chest, collar, throat or nostrils doing any inhalation or exhalation. In a very advance stage, one may just sense the subtle current of the air, like a whirl-pool of inward and outward motions, more like circulatory ones, at the tip of the nose, or in middle of the nose or in the upper nose, near the third eye. Some practitioners may develop some flap which would open and close when a "molecule" of air is allowed to flow in beyond in their meditation.
8. Samadhi
This is for the Spiritual Seekers who believe in the constant and repeating cycle of Death and Dirth and want to get liberation from this cycle. This is called "Moksha".
This seems to be Vikalpa and Nirvikalpa Samadhi. The earlier one is with the thought and the later one is without the thought. Vikalpa Samadhi is also called Sahita Samadhi - or added Samadhi.
This stage is all text book knowledge to me and I do not know anything about this stage.
While the sequence of the steps are important, it does not mean that one has to get a 100% mastery in one step and then go the next step.
There is nothing like a "black" and "white" demarcation, and this journey is iterative and running along many parallel tracks.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
The Magic Bullet Breathing Exercise - Kapal Bhati - Steps And Its Medical Benefits
Whatever is transcribed here is based on personal analysis and research, and not endorsed or found in any standard texts. So buyer of this information is subject to Caveat Emptor and I hold no liability to anyone claiming to have been misled by the information published herewith. Please do not copy this information without prior written permission.
Kapal Bhati is one of the most powerful Pranayamas. Till I get time to demonstrate it, please check some video by Ramdev or by someone in Youtube.
Still I would note down the steps to do this Pranayama.
1. Sit in Padmaasan, Sukha, Siddha or Vajra Aasan - cross-leg-ed or Lotus Posture and make sure your back is as straight as possible. There should be no forward looking curvature of the spine and the stomach should be free to move without any obstruction. Vajra Aasan is the best as it keeps the spin straight and backwards, and keeps the stomach loose from any constraints.
2. Do not use any chest, neck or nose muscles to do the breathing. This would be difficult in beginning but try to make a conscious effort. Over time this would become a second nature with practice.
3. Try to expand your stomach/belly slowly as much as you can and see the air rush in slowly. This would be the inhalation part. In Kapalbhati this is suppose to happen when one focuses on contraction, which is for exhalation.
4. Then contract your stomach/belly slowly as much as you can and see the air rush out slowly. This would be the exhalation part.
5. Over the time, try to increase the pace between the expansion and the contraction of the stomach/belly. This is difficult in the beginning but over the time this would become easy.
6. Please make sure that the contraction is done in a sudden jerk and the expansion is done slightly slowly. Exhalations should be relatively faster and Contractions should be relatively slower. Later the combination of the pace of the expansion and the contraction can be varied with practice.
7. Some people would find the contracting of tummy/stomach first easier, and then expanding it loose. So they can throw the air out and contract their stomach/belly first and then relax or expanding the stomach/belly muscles to let the air in, and repeat this cycle. Others would find the expansion of the stomach first easier, and that would be the ideal way to start, as mentioned in steps 3 and 4. In a continuous cycle of breathing in and out, it does not matter which comes first, breathing in with the contraction of stomach or breathing out with the tightening of stomach.
8. Make sure you do not raise your collar bones or move your spine go forward and backward in this process of the exhalation and the inhalation.
9. Do 25 in rapid cycle, then hold air as long as you can - with or without nostrils closed with right hand thumb and index finger - as part of Antariya Kumbha, and close your eyes and focus on your stomach. Slowly raise this cycle to 50 rounds and then to 100 rounds, and later on to 500 rounds. Later after some years, one may be able to continuously do 1000 rounds in one cycle and then hold his breath for longer time. Without closing nostrils, it is easier to hold breath for longer time but their is more benefit of holding breath with the nostrils closed.
Do Not:
1. Wait for 1 hour after food before doing Kapal-bhati - at least not very hard but may try slowly and see if there is any burning or painful sensation in the upper digestive tract.
2. If there is any heart or chest pain, please do not do this. Heart, Brain Trauma, and Hernia Patients should be very careful and pay special attention when doing this exercise.
3. Patients with digestive disorders should be careful and make sure they they do not hurt themselves.
4. Pregnant women should NOT do Kapal-bhati.
5. Menstruating women should consult their doctor before doing this, specially in early days of heavy bleeding as one may loose a lot of blood. They can try doing this as later part of their period, and it should help get rid of dead tissues and cleanup the uterus.
6. If you had a recent surgery please do NOT do this exercise.
7. If you are taking any medication that you think affects your breathing, respiration, blood circulation, metabolism, kidneys, liver, spleen, gall-bladder, cardio-vascular and nervous system, please consult your doctor.
8. People with Pulmonary, Middle and Inner Ear, Vertigo, Dizziness, and Eye/Retina/Glucoma issues should be careful.
Most of the time it is my opinion that individuals are fine if they listen to your body and notice any first sign of warning or protest from the body, before continuing in the path of doing anything that you think may hurt you. You are your best judge.
Medical Benefits:
1. Loose belly and make the stomach flat and taut.
2. Food is digested fast as gastric juices are mixed well with the food - like cooking - and assisting Peristalsis of organs in the digestive track.
3. Feces is passed fast.
4. Flatulence is cleared.
5. Urination happens fast.
6. Internal organs like Liver, Kidneys, Spleen and Gallbladder are massaged - helping stimulation of the organs as well as cleansing of toxic.
7. Increased Oxygen Level which helps increased energy levels and metabolism rate.
8. Fat and Cholesterol is burnt faster because of increased metabolism.
9. Increased Osmotic Pressure acts like a blast cleansing process, where toxins in blood are burnt.
10. Skin is cleared up of toxic and one can feel that skin is oozing out some gases - like the feeling in perspiration but with more intensity.
11. Some people may feel that their body is electrified and going through involuntary jerks. Later they can direct these jerks consciously with their thoughts with practice.
12. Helps in singing as one's capacity to hold and blow air improves - helping in maintaining a pitch and not needing as many pauses to take breath. Wondered how Shankar Mahadevan does a breath-less singing?
13. Because of "storage" effect, blood is more richer in oxygen, and one can hold one's breath for longer time, which helps swimming.
14. Respiratory Tract infections, like Cough, Cold, Bronchitis, Influenza and Tuberculosis get treated as the stress cycle of intense oxygenation and intense oxygen deprivation kills bacterial and viral infections. One can get rid of cold and infection, but land up with lost voice for a day!
14. Skin starts glowing and becomes clearer, smooth and shiny. Their is a radiance on the face which is what meant by the word "Kapal Bhati", the Face-Shine literally.
15. When one does Kapalbhati very fast, one can come to a resonance frequency of the stomach and the alimentary canals tract that suddenly the stomach will collapse on itself and one will not be able to exert any more pressure or force on the stomach muscles for those seconds, just like when an earthquake comes, the earth becomes a wave of liquid or powder particles, and it can not bear any thing solid, which causes so much of structural damage, besides shearing and swaying forces. So all the dirt and fat accumulation inside the linings of the alimentary canal would be cleaned up. The next day when one passes the stool, one would notice something "liquid fat" droplets. The same principle is used for cleaning surfaces, de-greasing, de-painting, and dentists use Ultrasound scalpel to clean teeth and at the same time create pressured water spray.
Also, see my article on Hyperberic Oxygen Therapy (coming soon) and based on this finding, apparently some newer benefits that I can think of are:
a. Stem Cells count goes up in the bone marrow.
b. Healing becomes faster
c. Bacterial and viral infections are cured
d. Newer blood vessels are formed, specially around the damaged areas in the brain and other parts of the body.
e. Stress does also leads to damages in the brain tissue, besides other complications, and research has found that by increasing ATP (Adenosine Tri Phosphate) metabolism, important for aerobic energy production, the damages can be prevented. Since oxygen is an important part of the equation, increased levels of Oxygen delivery alleviates the harm. Please see my posting on Stress (Stress And Yoga Mmeditation Can Help It and the video referenced there.
Over a period of time, one would find that one has developed a lot of Muscle control over Abdominal Muscles and also between the Eyes and inside the Nostrils and Thoriac Passage. Some may call it "awake-ning"of "local Chakaras" but whatever it may be called, it helps one accelerate the excretion of feaces faster and voluntarily. One can literally churn the Alimentary canal with different Pectoral Muscles Combinations. It is my observation, that after one thinks that one is done with the business of ablution, there is 40% more matter left to be excreted sometimes! This is why Pranayama is also called a Kriya or Cleansing Exercise.
In another form of Pranayama, it is my observation, that one can literally vaporize ones solid waste into voluntary flatulence discharges. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, that some of the Yogis bodies have not decomposed very rapidly in comparison to other normal people - and hence busting the myth of "divine" intervention.
Kapal Bhati is one of the most powerful Pranayamas. Till I get time to demonstrate it, please check some video by Ramdev or by someone in Youtube.
Still I would note down the steps to do this Pranayama.
1. Sit in Padmaasan, Sukha, Siddha or Vajra Aasan - cross-leg-ed or Lotus Posture and make sure your back is as straight as possible. There should be no forward looking curvature of the spine and the stomach should be free to move without any obstruction. Vajra Aasan is the best as it keeps the spin straight and backwards, and keeps the stomach loose from any constraints.
2. Do not use any chest, neck or nose muscles to do the breathing. This would be difficult in beginning but try to make a conscious effort. Over time this would become a second nature with practice.
3. Try to expand your stomach/belly slowly as much as you can and see the air rush in slowly. This would be the inhalation part. In Kapalbhati this is suppose to happen when one focuses on contraction, which is for exhalation.
4. Then contract your stomach/belly slowly as much as you can and see the air rush out slowly. This would be the exhalation part.
5. Over the time, try to increase the pace between the expansion and the contraction of the stomach/belly. This is difficult in the beginning but over the time this would become easy.
6. Please make sure that the contraction is done in a sudden jerk and the expansion is done slightly slowly. Exhalations should be relatively faster and Contractions should be relatively slower. Later the combination of the pace of the expansion and the contraction can be varied with practice.
7. Some people would find the contracting of tummy/stomach first easier, and then expanding it loose. So they can throw the air out and contract their stomach/belly first and then relax or expanding the stomach/belly muscles to let the air in, and repeat this cycle. Others would find the expansion of the stomach first easier, and that would be the ideal way to start, as mentioned in steps 3 and 4. In a continuous cycle of breathing in and out, it does not matter which comes first, breathing in with the contraction of stomach or breathing out with the tightening of stomach.
8. Make sure you do not raise your collar bones or move your spine go forward and backward in this process of the exhalation and the inhalation.
9. Do 25 in rapid cycle, then hold air as long as you can - with or without nostrils closed with right hand thumb and index finger - as part of Antariya Kumbha, and close your eyes and focus on your stomach. Slowly raise this cycle to 50 rounds and then to 100 rounds, and later on to 500 rounds. Later after some years, one may be able to continuously do 1000 rounds in one cycle and then hold his breath for longer time. Without closing nostrils, it is easier to hold breath for longer time but their is more benefit of holding breath with the nostrils closed.
Do Not:
1. Wait for 1 hour after food before doing Kapal-bhati - at least not very hard but may try slowly and see if there is any burning or painful sensation in the upper digestive tract.
2. If there is any heart or chest pain, please do not do this. Heart, Brain Trauma, and Hernia Patients should be very careful and pay special attention when doing this exercise.
3. Patients with digestive disorders should be careful and make sure they they do not hurt themselves.
4. Pregnant women should NOT do Kapal-bhati.
5. Menstruating women should consult their doctor before doing this, specially in early days of heavy bleeding as one may loose a lot of blood. They can try doing this as later part of their period, and it should help get rid of dead tissues and cleanup the uterus.
6. If you had a recent surgery please do NOT do this exercise.
7. If you are taking any medication that you think affects your breathing, respiration, blood circulation, metabolism, kidneys, liver, spleen, gall-bladder, cardio-vascular and nervous system, please consult your doctor.
8. People with Pulmonary, Middle and Inner Ear, Vertigo, Dizziness, and Eye/Retina/Glucoma issues should be careful.
Most of the time it is my opinion that individuals are fine if they listen to your body and notice any first sign of warning or protest from the body, before continuing in the path of doing anything that you think may hurt you. You are your best judge.
Medical Benefits:
1. Loose belly and make the stomach flat and taut.
2. Food is digested fast as gastric juices are mixed well with the food - like cooking - and assisting Peristalsis of organs in the digestive track.
3. Feces is passed fast.
4. Flatulence is cleared.
5. Urination happens fast.
6. Internal organs like Liver, Kidneys, Spleen and Gallbladder are massaged - helping stimulation of the organs as well as cleansing of toxic.
7. Increased Oxygen Level which helps increased energy levels and metabolism rate.
8. Fat and Cholesterol is burnt faster because of increased metabolism.
9. Increased Osmotic Pressure acts like a blast cleansing process, where toxins in blood are burnt.
10. Skin is cleared up of toxic and one can feel that skin is oozing out some gases - like the feeling in perspiration but with more intensity.
11. Some people may feel that their body is electrified and going through involuntary jerks. Later they can direct these jerks consciously with their thoughts with practice.
12. Helps in singing as one's capacity to hold and blow air improves - helping in maintaining a pitch and not needing as many pauses to take breath. Wondered how Shankar Mahadevan does a breath-less singing?
13. Because of "storage" effect, blood is more richer in oxygen, and one can hold one's breath for longer time, which helps swimming.
14. Respiratory Tract infections, like Cough, Cold, Bronchitis, Influenza and Tuberculosis get treated as the stress cycle of intense oxygenation and intense oxygen deprivation kills bacterial and viral infections. One can get rid of cold and infection, but land up with lost voice for a day!
14. Skin starts glowing and becomes clearer, smooth and shiny. Their is a radiance on the face which is what meant by the word "Kapal Bhati", the Face-Shine literally.
15. When one does Kapalbhati very fast, one can come to a resonance frequency of the stomach and the alimentary canals tract that suddenly the stomach will collapse on itself and one will not be able to exert any more pressure or force on the stomach muscles for those seconds, just like when an earthquake comes, the earth becomes a wave of liquid or powder particles, and it can not bear any thing solid, which causes so much of structural damage, besides shearing and swaying forces. So all the dirt and fat accumulation inside the linings of the alimentary canal would be cleaned up. The next day when one passes the stool, one would notice something "liquid fat" droplets. The same principle is used for cleaning surfaces, de-greasing, de-painting, and dentists use Ultrasound scalpel to clean teeth and at the same time create pressured water spray.
Also, see my article on Hyperberic Oxygen Therapy (coming soon) and based on this finding, apparently some newer benefits that I can think of are:
a. Stem Cells count goes up in the bone marrow.
b. Healing becomes faster
c. Bacterial and viral infections are cured
d. Newer blood vessels are formed, specially around the damaged areas in the brain and other parts of the body.
e. Stress does also leads to damages in the brain tissue, besides other complications, and research has found that by increasing ATP (Adenosine Tri Phosphate) metabolism, important for aerobic energy production, the damages can be prevented. Since oxygen is an important part of the equation, increased levels of Oxygen delivery alleviates the harm. Please see my posting on Stress (Stress And Yoga Mmeditation Can Help It and the video referenced there.
Over a period of time, one would find that one has developed a lot of Muscle control over Abdominal Muscles and also between the Eyes and inside the Nostrils and Thoriac Passage. Some may call it "awake-ning"of "local Chakaras" but whatever it may be called, it helps one accelerate the excretion of feaces faster and voluntarily. One can literally churn the Alimentary canal with different Pectoral Muscles Combinations. It is my observation, that after one thinks that one is done with the business of ablution, there is 40% more matter left to be excreted sometimes! This is why Pranayama is also called a Kriya or Cleansing Exercise.
In another form of Pranayama, it is my observation, that one can literally vaporize ones solid waste into voluntary flatulence discharges. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, that some of the Yogis bodies have not decomposed very rapidly in comparison to other normal people - and hence busting the myth of "divine" intervention.
The Anatomy of Mechanical Respiration
The breathing in and breathing out is what is called here Mechanical Respiration. As human nature is, we take this as granted and do not give much thought to it but is one of the most wonderful systems not well understood by most of the people.
Lets see how does the breathing happen. From nostrils, the air gets filtered by hair and passes into upper nasal pharynx cavity to larynx mouth cavity to wind pipe to trachea to bronchial tree on each side to alveolar sacks. On its way it passes the vocal chords, thyroid glands and ventilates sinus cavity above nose. The respiratory system is part of thoracic cavity and separates from abdominal cavity by diaphragm, which is attached to lungs. and plays an important role in breathing.
So how does the Oxygen rich air flow in? The Boyle's Law states that PxV=RT, which means if we increase the volume of lungs, pressure will reduce inside lungs and air will be sucked by itself from outside.
Nature has provided following levers, in order from maximum leverage to minimal leverage, to do the breathing:
a. Diaphragm - when it moves down, or when stomach is expanded, air rushes in. Only babies use this and one can see their bellies going up and down when they are sleeping. But as they start to walk, this habit is lost. It is used very minimally when doing things strenuous.
b. Intercostal Muscles - lungs are attached to the rib cage via these muscles and by expanding chest, the air flows in.
c. Interclavicle Muscles - muscles attached to the collar bones and lungs which can be exercised when lifting one's shoulder, though very subtle movement of air happens, and one may not sense it if not made sensitized to air flows in the respiratory system.
d. Thoracic Muscles - by contracting and expanding, near vocal areas, one can also breath and is used in strenuous exercises.
e. Nasal Muscles - by contracting and expanding muscles in the nose, one can also breath, though people may not have much control unless these muscles are developed.
It is clear that we hardly exercise all muscles to maximize breathing or do anything consciously to use some of the muscles. To maximize metabolism, one can employ all knobs and to minimize metabolism, one can only use the nostril, at least theoretically! Once metabolism is in control, heart, mind, brain, etc., are all in control!
Please note in the thoracic cavity, there is a thymus gland, which is part of the lymphatic system, and connected via the largest lymphatic vessels called thoracic duct, complemented by right lymphatic duct. Breathing plays an important part in controlling the flow of lymphocytes from Thymus and plays a crucial role in Immune System. Thymus controls the production of T-Cells which play an important part of the immune system.
The lymphatic system has three interrelated functions: (1) removal of excess fluids from body tissues, (2) absorption of fatty acids and subsequent transport of fat, as chyle, to the circulatory system and, (3) production of immune cells such as lymphocytes (e.g. antibody producing plasma cells like T-Cells and B-Cells) and monocytes.
Breathing has 4 parts: (1) Inhalation - Purnika, (2) Inner Retention - Antriya Kumbhka, (3) Exhalation - Rachika, and (4) External Retention - Bahriya Kumbhka.
Permutation and combination of the four parts of the breathing components, along usage of different muscles in the respiratory system, and passage locks developed during the course of Yoga training, and Aasanas make an important part of Pranayama.
As discussed earlier, the systematic and conscious control of breathing can be used to control the mind and the metabolism of the body. It is rigorously can be used in Meditation and control of Mind.
The ultimate in Pranayama and Kumbhaka is called Kevala Kumbha, where one suspends the mechanical breathing in and out, with helps of mechanical, aasan and pressure locks, but only sustaining himself with natural ventilation and exchange of oxygen in nostrils. There are many degrees of it, depending on mental state, posture, place and time. This can be used to transcend Mind and is the goal of Raja Yoga.
Over the years of Yoga practice, one develops control of locks to aid in this process. Please be advised, do not try this without guidance as death and damage can result. A lot of magic powers have been mentioned by texts on this aspect, but I do not know about them, except of some calming, healing and meditative powers. Even if one has mastered this, please make sure that you allow your body to recover after doing this Kumbha, before doing any activity, like walking or getting up, as you may faint or pass out.
In Geeta in Chapter 6, On Meditation, and other chapters too, it is mentioned that one should do Metitation by suspending the Apnaa and Pranaa and the interpretations given by most of the famous translators is true and subject to their personal experiences - and in one journey one may experience all of them. References: (1) Kevala Kumbha and (2) Dr. Sivananda on Kevala Kumbha. Apnaa is the downward movement of the Life Forces and Pranaa is the upward movement of the Life Forces - and the two are having a grosser representation in the Inhalation and Exhalation Process.
Geeta says:
Apane juhvati pranam pranepanam tathapare; Pranapanagatee ruddhva pranayamaparayanah (Gita, Ch. IV-29.). Others offer Prana (outgoing breath) in Apana (incoming breath) and Apana in Prana, restraining the passage of Prana and Apana, absorbed in Pranayama. Pranayama is a precious Yajna (sacrifice). Some practise the kind of Pranayama called Puraka (filling in). Some practise the kind of Pranayama called Rechaka (emptying). Some are engaged in the practice of Pranayama called Kumbhaka, by impeding the outward passage of air, through the nostrils and the mouth, and by impeding the inward passage of the air, in the opposite direction. Reference: Geeta on Kevala Kumbha - Translation by Dr. Sivananda.
Lets see how does the breathing happen. From nostrils, the air gets filtered by hair and passes into upper nasal pharynx cavity to larynx mouth cavity to wind pipe to trachea to bronchial tree on each side to alveolar sacks. On its way it passes the vocal chords, thyroid glands and ventilates sinus cavity above nose. The respiratory system is part of thoracic cavity and separates from abdominal cavity by diaphragm, which is attached to lungs. and plays an important role in breathing.
So how does the Oxygen rich air flow in? The Boyle's Law states that PxV=RT, which means if we increase the volume of lungs, pressure will reduce inside lungs and air will be sucked by itself from outside.
Nature has provided following levers, in order from maximum leverage to minimal leverage, to do the breathing:
a. Diaphragm - when it moves down, or when stomach is expanded, air rushes in. Only babies use this and one can see their bellies going up and down when they are sleeping. But as they start to walk, this habit is lost. It is used very minimally when doing things strenuous.
b. Intercostal Muscles - lungs are attached to the rib cage via these muscles and by expanding chest, the air flows in.
c. Interclavicle Muscles - muscles attached to the collar bones and lungs which can be exercised when lifting one's shoulder, though very subtle movement of air happens, and one may not sense it if not made sensitized to air flows in the respiratory system.
d. Thoracic Muscles - by contracting and expanding, near vocal areas, one can also breath and is used in strenuous exercises.
e. Nasal Muscles - by contracting and expanding muscles in the nose, one can also breath, though people may not have much control unless these muscles are developed.
It is clear that we hardly exercise all muscles to maximize breathing or do anything consciously to use some of the muscles. To maximize metabolism, one can employ all knobs and to minimize metabolism, one can only use the nostril, at least theoretically! Once metabolism is in control, heart, mind, brain, etc., are all in control!
Please note in the thoracic cavity, there is a thymus gland, which is part of the lymphatic system, and connected via the largest lymphatic vessels called thoracic duct, complemented by right lymphatic duct. Breathing plays an important part in controlling the flow of lymphocytes from Thymus and plays a crucial role in Immune System. Thymus controls the production of T-Cells which play an important part of the immune system.
The lymphatic system has three interrelated functions: (1) removal of excess fluids from body tissues, (2) absorption of fatty acids and subsequent transport of fat, as chyle, to the circulatory system and, (3) production of immune cells such as lymphocytes (e.g. antibody producing plasma cells like T-Cells and B-Cells) and monocytes.
Breathing has 4 parts: (1) Inhalation - Purnika, (2) Inner Retention - Antriya Kumbhka, (3) Exhalation - Rachika, and (4) External Retention - Bahriya Kumbhka.
Permutation and combination of the four parts of the breathing components, along usage of different muscles in the respiratory system, and passage locks developed during the course of Yoga training, and Aasanas make an important part of Pranayama.
As discussed earlier, the systematic and conscious control of breathing can be used to control the mind and the metabolism of the body. It is rigorously can be used in Meditation and control of Mind.
The ultimate in Pranayama and Kumbhaka is called Kevala Kumbha, where one suspends the mechanical breathing in and out, with helps of mechanical, aasan and pressure locks, but only sustaining himself with natural ventilation and exchange of oxygen in nostrils. There are many degrees of it, depending on mental state, posture, place and time. This can be used to transcend Mind and is the goal of Raja Yoga.
Over the years of Yoga practice, one develops control of locks to aid in this process. Please be advised, do not try this without guidance as death and damage can result. A lot of magic powers have been mentioned by texts on this aspect, but I do not know about them, except of some calming, healing and meditative powers. Even if one has mastered this, please make sure that you allow your body to recover after doing this Kumbha, before doing any activity, like walking or getting up, as you may faint or pass out.
In Geeta in Chapter 6, On Meditation, and other chapters too, it is mentioned that one should do Metitation by suspending the Apnaa and Pranaa and the interpretations given by most of the famous translators is true and subject to their personal experiences - and in one journey one may experience all of them. References: (1) Kevala Kumbha and (2) Dr. Sivananda on Kevala Kumbha. Apnaa is the downward movement of the Life Forces and Pranaa is the upward movement of the Life Forces - and the two are having a grosser representation in the Inhalation and Exhalation Process.
Geeta says:
Apane juhvati pranam pranepanam tathapare; Pranapanagatee ruddhva pranayamaparayanah (Gita, Ch. IV-29.). Others offer Prana (outgoing breath) in Apana (incoming breath) and Apana in Prana, restraining the passage of Prana and Apana, absorbed in Pranayama. Pranayama is a precious Yajna (sacrifice). Some practise the kind of Pranayama called Puraka (filling in). Some practise the kind of Pranayama called Rechaka (emptying). Some are engaged in the practice of Pranayama called Kumbhaka, by impeding the outward passage of air, through the nostrils and the mouth, and by impeding the inward passage of the air, in the opposite direction. Reference: Geeta on Kevala Kumbha - Translation by Dr. Sivananda.
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