Transition Smoothly through the Seasons with Yoga and Ayurveda

Our second session for 2010 at the Saint Paul Yoga Center spanned two seasons. Something that links two things can be thought of as a bridge. Yoga is, at its very core, about joining or connecting. The transition from one thing to another is very special. How we cross the bridge between two things (for example, from winter to spring) largely determines the qualities of that transition. The qualities of our transitions, in turn, hugely impact the quality of our lives.

Transitions that are smooth and graceful will generally be more balanced and helpful than transitions that are rough and awkward.  If a transition is rough, we can go out of balance and even get sick.

Having a sense of where we're coming from and where we are going to can help to make a transition smoother, steadier and more graceful. This can help to inform our actions, allowing us to make better choices. A simple example from yoga asana is that someone with loose joints would want to move in the direction of creating stronger and more stable joints, whereas someone with overly tight joints would want to move toward more openness and mobility in their joints. Also, vinyasa, or flowing asana practice, can help us experience more fluid, smooth transitions.

In a sense, we're always moving into the unknown. We can, however, have a clear intent about where we want to move to. Ritual creates the space to express our intentions and focus our attention to help create positive qualities such as openness and clarity. Moving gracefully into the future requires surrender, though. The two pillars of yoga are practice (abhyasa, or work) and non-attachment (vairagyam, or surrender). Our work can help to prepare us for what is coming, but letting go is essential for effortless transitions. That includes letting go of the past and not being attached to future outcomes.

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." -Gilda Radner -actress and comedian (1946-1989)

One bridge between two worlds is our attention. Steady attention creates a steadier bridge. On the other hand, inattentiveness, or distraction, will tend to lead to rougher and less fluid transitions.

Winter: One Side of the Bridge

According to Ayurveda, the ancient science of health that is a sister science to yoga, the qualities associated with the heavier elements of earth and water (called Kapha) tend to accumulate in winter. These qualities include cold, dampness, stability (or immobility), heaviness, contraction and introversion. The qualities of the season we are in also increase inside us. Kapha can continue to accumulate in us during early spring, when it is cool and wet outside (this year being a notable exception).  When kapha is out of balance, or excessive, it can lead to lethargy, congestion, heaviness, depression, and illness.

We want to mirror the movement of the seasons from heaviness toward greater lightness. The transition into spring is an important time to balance kapha. If we can shed the heaviness of winter, we can bring the uplifting energy of spring (and then summer) into our lives. Purification of mind and body are an essential part of this lightness.

At the same time, we don't want to throw out the proverbial  baby with the bathwater.  As much as you may welcome spring, it's important to acknowledge the gifts of winter: stability, stillness, resting. Try to retain the essential qualities of winter, even as you move toward the energizing, active qualities of summer.

The momentum of spring: Pitta rising

Just as early spring tends to be more like winter, later spring is more like summer. Summer-like qualities become stronger as we move through spring. Summer is connected with the qualities of fire and water (called Pitta). In the proper proportions, fire and water will create steam. When contained, steam creates pressure (think pressure cooker). Blockages inside can cause that increasing Pitta to create excess pressure, which can lead to irritation, agitation, irritability impatience, or annoyance.  You may have felt this well before spring arrived. This "Pitta aggravation" is a sign that the transition to spring could be smoother.

Out with the old, in with the new: the seasons of the breath

In our last newsletter, we compared the qualities of winter and summer to the qualities of the moon and sun.  We can also look at the connection between the qualities of the seasons and the qualities of the breath.  Winter is connected to the exhalation: calming, contracting, introverted, grounding, and downward-moving. Summer is connected to the inhalation: alert, expansive, extroverted, rising.                            

Spring itself can be considered a transition from winter to summer.  Winter is the ultimate seasonal expression of the qualities of the moon and of the exhalation. Summer is the ultimate seasonal expression of the qualities of the sun and the inhalation. In balancing the qualities of the sun and the moon (ha-tha), we are also balancing the qualities of the inhalation and the exhalation. The emphasis changes throughout the breath, but retaining the essential qualities of both the inhalation and exhalation at all times is a powerful doorway into better balance. In other words balancing polarities creates a bridge, contacting both "worlds."

Gunas, the qualities of nature

 Gracefully moving from winter to spring can be particularly challenging because of the inertia associated with winter. Yoga describes three qualities of nature, called gunas. Tamas, which is heavy and stable, resists change (even when change is helpful). Rajas, which is light and mobile, embraces change (even when change is unhelpful). Sattva is a harmonious balance between tamas and rajas, retaining what is helpful and changing what is not. A balanced practice will often start with summer energy (rajas) and end with winter energy (tamas), helping to create a more sattvic state for the practitioner. One definition of a balanced pose is that it has both lightness (summer, sun  energy, inhalation, rajas) and stability (winter, moon energy, exhalation, tamas). 

According to Ayurveda, your unique constitution (called prakruti in Sanskrit) is an important factor when considering how to balance the effects of the season. Someone with a lot of Kapha qualities in their constitution, for example, will tend to be more challenged in balancing those qualities in and after winter. Here is a link to one assessment to help you determine your constitution. It is generally helpful to take more than one assessment. This one gives some background information on the first page and has a button at the bottom of the page to link you to the assessment. Here's one more for good measure. Your constitution remains the same throughout your life. Yoga also addresses contacting what doesn't change. Finding silence in sound, stillness in movement, and timelessness within time can help us connect with our center and be less disturbed by change.

Your current condition (called vikruti in Sanskrit) is another essential piece of information for knowing what you need for better balance at any given time. Your condition is constantly changing.

Cleanliness IS Godliness

Mahatma Gandhi used the mantra "Cleanliness is Godliness."  Sauca, or cleanliness, is the first of the Niyamas. The Niyamas  (literally "observances") form the second limb of the ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga path. Sauca refers to both physical and mental purity. Internal cleaning and external cleaning are both important. Each is necessary, but not sufficient. Since external cleaning in spring is a subject that has been addressed exhaustively, I won't deal with it here.

Each season offers opportunities to start or renew certain practices that, while particularly helpful for that season, are beneficial year-round. Cleansing practices in spring are a classic example of that, and we have many to choose from.

Ama: internal toxins

Ayurveda describes undigested residue or toxins (called ama in Sanskrit) that can accumulate in the body. Ama can come from various sources:  consumption of toxic foods and substances, incomplete digestion (which can be caused by weak digestion, overconsumption, and activities and eating habits that interfere with digestion), constipation, and excess or chronic stresses among other things. Ama interferes with the body's natural processes, adversely affecting physical and mental energy and overall health. Arterial plaque is an example of accumulated ama.

One place that ama shows up is on the tongue, as a white coating. Tongue cleaning helps to remove this ama, reducing bacteria in the mouth that can increase dental plaque and cause bad breath.  Tongue cleaning alone won't be sufficient to counter the effects of consistent exposure to environmental, dietary and stress-induced toxins. (Phrases such as "toxic relationship" acknowledge the role of unhelpful stress in creating a poisonous effect on us.)

Having a strong agni, or digestive fire, can help prevent you from producing ama.  Your asana and pranayama practice can help you develop tapas, or inner heat, to stoke your agni.  Kriyas (cleansing yoga practices, such as kapalabhati, the skull-shining breath), panchakarma, and fasting are examples of ways to do internal cleansing and strengthen your agni.

Food as Medicine

As you might guess, diet is critically important. It is a vast subject that is dealt with extensively by Ayurveda. The dietary principles of Ayurveda can be a powerful complement to your yoga practice. Food can act as a medicine or a poison. Ayurveda views food and herbs as medicines. Many factors determine what diet will be healing for an individual at any given time.

What you don't eat is just as important as what you do eat. For example, reducing your dairy consumption, especially hard cheeses and ice cream, will give you a less congesting diet. Regular eating times-and sufficient breaks between meals-will also help keep your agni strong. From bluelotusayurveda.com:"The best preventive medicine and support of the natural healing process is a diet and lifestyle specific to your constitutional needs and in line with the seasons and cycles of nature."

Slow down with a fast

 Fasting is like breath retention-a pause. One time-honored method of cleansing is fasting.  Dietary fasting has many forms. If you choose to explore fasting, go slowly, and end it gradually. Don't do what I did with my first fast in my early twenties. Never having fasted before, I did a seven-day water-only fast. It wasn't exactly a gentle introduction.  Extreme actions are likely to result in less smooth transitions. Short fasts (e.g., a half-day fast)and juice-only fasts are examples of milder forms of fasting. Ayurveda suggests a simplified diet to help cleanse, using kitchari.

Fasting may be contraindicated for some health conditions, so consult your doctor if you're concerned.  Fasting not only can help to bring lightness to your body, it can also bring focus and clarity to your mind. Preparing and eating food also consumes a lot of time and attention for us, which fasting can free up. By taking a break from food, we allow tiredness or fatigue that may be hiding under the surface to emerge. Be sure to allow extra time for rest and quiet when you fast.

There are many ways to fast in order to release congestion. Fasting from food may come to mind first, but there are other types of fasts that can also bring us lightness.  Observing silence (fasting from talking) is powerful, conserving energy and giving you an opportunity to pay closer attention to what is happening inside and outside. Fasting from TV can reduce the overstimulation that creates a kind of mental congestion. Being still (fasting from movement) can help to reduce distractions. Busyness overwhelms our system.  Take a fast from your To Do list. Create blocks of unscheduled time.

The end is in sight!

If you have made it this far, you have exhibited an important quality for healing and for creating smooth transitions: patience.

I have heard spring described as the "new year" of the seasons. Each season is a kind of New Year. But isn't each moment a new beginning? It is often said that we need to bring more life to our years and not just more years to our life. We can bring more life to our moments. The number of moments in a year are too numerous to count. Feeling the fullness of each moment is one way to describe what we call being "fully present." Each instant has the potential to feel rich and complete. Time may seem to slow down, or even disappear, when we feel the fullness of each moment.

We really can't afford to take a single moment for granted. What we take for granted we ignore and lack gratitude for (and are thus disconnected from). All of those ignored moments add up. Because we take so much for granted, our capacity to feel and express gratitude has been stunted. Like learning a challenging pose, we need to practice gratitude diligently if we hope to make progress. There are many ways to express gratitude. Living our lives as fully as possible may be the ultimate way to express gratitude for our lives.

Every moment we are in transition.  Each moment is a transition to the next, a symbolic death and rebirth. Each moment is an opportunity to wake up from our dream state, so that this great dream of existence can become more conscious, lucid, clear-- and always more kind.

What is the "present moment"? The present moment is the present we have been presented with again and again. If we can remember that we are always in the presence of the divine, perhaps we can begin to comprehend and appreciate what this present moment is. Language is imperfect and inadequate to the task, so I will stop here.