Wasn't yoga supposed to give me superpowers, it's there on the tin for heavens sake (yoga sutras), siddhis, super powers...
Following is a list of 23 siddhi powers: (not all of these in the Yoga Sutras)
Considered to be the Warrior Siddhi Powers:
Trikalajriatvam - knowledge of the past, present and future.
Advandvam: to be beyond pleasure-pain, cold-heat, soft-hard. Non-duality.
Parachittadyabhijnata: knowledge of dreams and the mind.
Pratishtambah: control of effect of fire, wind, water, poisons, weapons, and the sun.
Aparajayah: Victorious. Not able to be defeated.
The next are considered only to occur as the heart begins to purify and flower:
Anumimattvam: hunger, thirst, grief, sorrow, infatuation, delusion and confusion of the mind, old age and death do not harm the body.
Doorshravan: to hear, sitting at one place, speech from however distant a place.
Dudarshan: to see simultaneously events and things in all the realms.
Manojava: the body can travel at the speed of thought to any place.
Kaamaroopa: to assume any form. Shapeshifting.
Parakayapravesh: ability to enter into another's body, whether they are dead or alive.
Swachchandamrutyu: to die at one's own will, death having no control over one.
Sahakridanudarshanam: to see the sports of gods in heaven and have capacity and prowess to participate in it.
Yathaasamkalpa samsiddhi: to attain whatever is desired.
Ajnaapratihataagatih: whereby one's command and movement have no obstruction
These are considered to be the highest siddhi powers:
Anima: the reduction of one's form to one atom. Invisibility
Mahima/Garima: the body can be made to be very heavy.
Laghima: the body can be made to be extremely light
Prapti: abilty to acquire objects of sense pertaining to the respective organs.
Prakaashya: to see invisible things in other realms.
Ishitaa: to stimulate bodies and creatures Control of forces of nature.
Vashita: to have control or dominion over the senses.
Yatkamastadavasyati: To obtain joy by willing it so. The cessation of misery and desire. This is considered to be the highest state of bliss
Not that I was or am the least bit interested in siddhis (will settle for ever improving focus) but five years of twice daily practice, seven days a week give or take, you'd think something would rub off...
I'm supposed to be Superman now, a bit ...No?
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Nietzsche NanoBalloons |
NO.
Couple of weeks ago I ended up with Kidney stones....again (the last time was before yoga when I was an overweight carnivour and exceedingly unhealthy). Now I know there's supposed to be an asana for curing leprosy (no really), surely there's one for preventing Kidney Stones and with a Vinyasa Krama practice there can't be that many asana I've missed out, should be covered right?
Apparently not.
...and didn't I get flu a while back,
....and food poisoning
oh and I broke a nail.
Now get this...
Saw the results from the CAT scan for the kidney stones yesterday and it seems I have .....arthritis.
Arthritis! I'm, 47 not 87, Arthritis, really? COME ON!
'Osteoarthritis (OA) also known as degenerative arthritis or degenerative joint disease or osteoarthrosis, lumbosacral arthritis'.
I'm supposed to be Superman
Turns out the Arthritis is of the 'wear and tear' variety most likely a result of the 80's when I spent most of the decade travelling rough and picking up whatever labouring job I could find in what ever country I happened to be in that week or month or year, building houses, roofs, laying roads, digging ditches, hodding bricks, laying concrete....
It was only when my back did finally give out on me that decided to stay in once place and go back to Uni but even then I paid my way working as a Pizza chef carrying great stacks of dough trays every day.
Wear and tear, yep.
I've been feeling pain in my lower back for the last year, mentioned it a couple of times here, normally it's only in the cold weather and in the mornings. This time it's lasted pretty much all year round, even had to switch my practice around so I was practising Ashtanga in the evenings and a lighter Vinyasa Krama practice in the mornings.
So I'm not that surprised.... but Arthritis, REALLY!
Yesterdays conversations at the clinic went a little like this....
Doctor: They also noticed you have wear and tear Arthritis of the lumbar spine
ME: What's the treatment?
Doctor: Exercise is best, your already in very good health (apart from the kidney Stones obviously)
Me: I practice Yoga
Doctor: That's perfect, no need to send you to the physio then.
Apparently yoga is the best thing you can do for this, it improves the flow of blood around the spine and strengthens the back muscles taking some of the pressure off the spine, slowing down the wear and tear. Without the yoga it would probably have been worse, especially as I'd been overweight for years before I came to the practice.
And as for the Kidney stones, that was more a case of eating too much spinach, my own bette noir, in all those green smoothies*
As it happens the night the pain was at it's worse, the male equivalent of child birth according to the doctor (yeah yeah I know), when the headache tablets we had in the house weren't having the slightest effect (obviously.... I mean it's like childbirth), it was only the Pranayama that got me through till morning without searching YouTube for videos on how to remove your own kidney. Did I mention it's like childbirth, no really.
The stone btw seems to be on it's merry way, not out yet but almost I suspect and it may well be down to the yoga and all that twisting and shoving my heels into my gut that have helped it cheerly along it's way.
So OK, yoga DIDN'T let me down, but I still don't feel like Superman just yet...
Batman on a good day perhaps but then he's human , all too human.
Time for practice... best thing about the pain killers for the stones is that I'm not feeling the slightest twinge in my back in the mornings, nice to have a full on morning practice again.... of a while.
UPDATE
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| Out at last, all that fuss for a pretty little thing like this. |
* re green smoothies. I've had Kidney stones before and supposedly should be avoiding raw spinach and leafy greens (unless I'm consuming and absorbing enough calcium - it's complicated). At the time I was meat eater and spinach was the furthest thing from my mind so never really registered it.
16 comments:
Hey Grim, I have a quick question for you. I have the primary series led by P. Jois, but it has only 3 Sury A and 3 B's. I'm used to practice with 5 each and i'm thinking on editing the video and include another 2 for each of them. I also happen to have an iMac and just wondering what program do you use for editing videos. I know you mentioned it in a post, but not sure how to find it. Thanks! And by the way, I love your blog and i think you're doing a great job, you have inspired me a lot during the past few years. Keep up the good work.
Hi Anon. I think i did a similar thing, added the rest of standing on to the Jois led 2nd
I've always used Quicktime pro mainly because it's so quick and easy and just simple, often don;t need all the fancy bells and whistles of imove etc.
Open your Jois led primary in Quicktime pro
Underneath the movie there are three little cursers, the bottom two are for copying and cutting the top one is for placing.
so put the first bottom cursor at the start of the last two suryA's and the second bottom cursor at the end of the second SuryB. On the drop down edit file click copy and then drag the top cursor to the position you want to insert the extra four sury's (just between the end of the A's and beginning of the B's and click paste, then save the movie. I'd make sure you save a back up of the movie before you start fiddling with it though.
Same kind of thing with iMovie. import the movie to iMovie start a new project. drag the movie into the new project then highlight the section you want to copy and then paste it in the same place. iMovie is ok just a little slower I find.
Hope that helps, glad you find the blog useful.
It's pretty much the same process in iMovie though which I imagine you'll have.
Glad the stone's finally out G, but sorry to hear about the OA, that sucks. At least your already well on the case... Went to see David Swenson last weekend. He said to always practice at about 85% capacity and you will have a nice sustainable practice. Just in case you push yourself like me every day 100% or nothing at all!
Best, Micqui
Yeah, like childbirth really. My cousin has found her husband passed out in the bathroom after birthing some that were not even as big as that one. I hope you figure out your calcium to greens ratio cocktail. Do you think raw has something to do with it?
Yoga is keeping is from falling apart Grim, without holding our past against us.
I'm glad it is over... As a side note. It is somehow weird, that the most healthy (at least treated so... I mean full of healthy nutrition) veggies can cause such a pain, ridiculous, what to say. I read somewhere, that a lot of apple should be eaten together with spinach and Co.
Did you prepare your smoothies with apples?
Well, I think you're a legend, a human one, but a legend nonetheless!
Hi G good to hear it has passed, sounds very painful! Interesting what Micqui said, about practicing to 85% capacity, especially in times like this.... And as per the A, good thing you are well on your way into your maintenance progrAm with yoga!
Ouch. I hope you at least get some of those post-birth endorphins.
Regarding the effect yoga has on our life, this is impossible to tell. To know if something's had an effect, we need a control group which doesn't experience the intervention. There is no control Ragdoll who didn't take up yoga a few years ago. I can believe it's responsible for improved digestion, improved mental health, and everything else that goes with it, but I can't prove it.
Who knows how you'd be - who you'd be - without the yoga?
Thanks Micqui, yes i saw your David Swenson post have been wanting to comment on iy. exploring the 'just worry about your hips and forget about your legs bit' big difference, had read about it before and tended to focus on the hips but completely forgetting about the legs and feet altogether has just sunk in , makes a difference with straight leg jump through too.
Yes, don't want to give up on the smoothies completely but haven't had one since. need to think about how best to approach them again, moderation moderation and rotating, my problem was, I loved the spinach ones too much.
I know K, hardly seems fair. : ) yes, would put an apple or pear in with each smoothie.
thanks Nomen, don't how to respond to that one : )
Thanks Claudia. What do you thin it is when Sharath's in town, 110 %
yes rag doll, the endorphins would be good but just practiced post stone/post bag of meds and I'm still pretty ache free, think all those anti inflammatories must have calmed everything down a bit.
i too am pretty skeptical about most if not all the claims for yoga or pretty much anything else health related, jury is always out. i practice because i seem more focused and calmer as a result, everything else is a bonus.
that said. before yoga i was overweight and a heavy meat and junk food eater, mainly out of convenience, plus I wasn't getting much exercise. All of those according to regular studies are supposed to make OA worse or certainly not help. The standard advice seems to be to exercise more ( see a Physio and I checked most of the Physio exercises for this are pretty much what we include in our practice anyway), eat less red meat, lose weight, eat less salt etc. It was as a result of Yoga that I changed my diet, exercised more, losing a hell of a lot of weight and basically thinking more about how I was living my life. So I think it's pretty safe to say that it was all a step/intervention in the right direction and that it most likely would have been worse. But I hear what your saying.
re yoga studies just came across something by accident "Psychophysiological Effects of Yoga"
https://iayt.org/site_vx2/publications/Bibliographies_General/psychophysiology.pdf
not really my thing but am planning a post on it in the next couple of days, all sorts of curious studies mentioned.
Do you know Tim Minchin's song 'If I didn't have you'? It's basically saying 'if I didn't have you (my wife) I'd have someone else, and not know you even existed, and be blissfully in love with this other woman instead, and that's not to diminish what I do have with you, because having you makes the life I do have incredible . . . but my life with her would be incredible too' etc etc.
I feel that way about yoga, often. Who's to say that if you'd have gone to a Tai Chi class instead, your life wouldn't have changed in some other, revolutionary - better - way? Or a team sport. Or some other hobby that's not physical but brought about physical changes in its own way. But now we have yoga, and believe that nothing else will do.
We just can't know. And one of the things that makes me think I'll never be such a great blogger is that I tend to think 'we don't know and it doesn't matter'. This is probably already the longest I'll ever move myself to write about it.
As it stands, everything (the asana, the way my eating has changed, the way my thinking and sleeping and even my socialising has changed) is so interconnected it's impossible to say which caused the other. If I hadn't have been ready to start getting the early nights, I'd never have kept up the yoga. If I hadn't have found the yoga, I'd never have kept up the early nights.
I so wish I had time to look at everyone of those studies you've linked to.
Jut watched him perform the song on Youtube ; ) kind of like a warped Shakespearian sonnet or perhaps a riff on Whitman's 'love is as perennial as the grass'.
of course pure, full on, hard core determinism would say it had to be Ashtanga right from the big bang.
I like to play that game too of course, funny but however i tear down the idols, deconstruct the myths and fairytales, the half truths and misinformation still end up loving the practice, a glorious accident. While sick Vinyasa Krama would have made more sense but I stubbornly drove myself through primary every day in spite of my better judgement.
I like to keep asking myself why yoga, why Ashtanga, really donut think Vinyasa Krama would have worked for me that first year, perhaps two, seemed to need that set sequence, the warrior narrative, less so now, except when sick.
interesting you mention tai chi, I used to practice Aikido years ago and a few years ago Iaido but my knees weren't up to seiza (kneeling), would have liked to take up running but still the knees not up to it still don't understand why my knees are fine in all this pretzel making.
So it's kind of the same game but rather than the conditional, 'what if it had been something else' I keep wondering 'why this', what was it/is it about this that just happened(s) to work, because if you can understand that then you can seek to understand why it might not work for everyone and why something slightly different, whether style of practice or something different altogether might be more appropriate for someone else or why you might need to take your (spiritual- very rare for me to use this word) practice in a different direction altogether.
So glad the kidney stones have passed Grimmly. My dad gets them too and these are the only times in life when he ever expresses he's in pain. When you tell doctors you practice yoga, they usually imagines a gentle hatha practice, not leg behind the head moves. Best to consult experienced older yoga practitioners, some of whom do have arthritis or other wear and tear injuries due to decades of asana practice (alignment issues? pushing the body too hard? I don't really know).
Tahnk you Yyogini. Yes was thinking a similar thing. there's yoga and then there's yoga. these days i don't find asana such an afford, know how to find enough space in the spine for most of the stuff i practice, don't feel the need to go any further up my legs in kapo than my ankles and not bothered about chakra bhandasana, leg behind head is pretty comfortable. But your right, one my oldest and dearest friends is a yoga teacher of twenty years plus and a physiotherapist too, will be paying her a visit
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