Books on Happiness / the happiness revolution - 2 students

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nostrils and the space between the two eyebrows. Let the mind and breath flow between these two points for 10-25 complete breaths.

At this point, you start to reverse the practice. You will always start each new breathing pattern with an exhalation – as if to purge yourself of the old and exhausted before you can be renewed with fresh pranic energy. You will breathe for five complete breaths at each point until you reach the lower areas of your body where you will breath for 10 full breaths. You will begin the reversal of this exercise by exhaling from the crown of your head to the center of the nostrils for five full breaths. Next, exhale to your throat for five breaths. Next, exhale from your crown to your heart center for five breaths. Next, exhale from your crown to your solar plexus and back for five breaths. Next, exhale from the crown of your head to your perineum at the base of your torso for five breaths. Next, exhale from the crown of your head to your knee joints for five breaths. Next, exhale from the crown of your head to your ankles for 10 breaths. Finally, exhale from the crown of your head to your toes for 10 breaths. This concludes this exercise.

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You are returning from a state of deep relaxation, please go slowly as you re-awaken your body. While remaining in the corpse pose, start to gently wiggle your fingers and toes. Bring your hands together and rub your palms vigorously to heat them up. Then gently place your warm palms over your eyes. Gradually let your eyes open into the darkness of the palms, keeping the eyes open as you gently remove your hands. Bring both knees to the chest and gently rock the knees and back from side to side. Then gently roll to your left side with the knees curled toward the chest and lie there for 30-60 seconds. During this phase of re-awakening your body, this position allows all the essential fluids to return to the region of your heart as you prepare to rise up and restart your day. Gently use both arms to push yourself up into a seated position and return to your duties of the day.

Sleep, Rest and Relaxation

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You can download this instruction sheet along with a graphic for Advanced Relaxation at www.AliveandHealthy.com.

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The regular practice of these relaxation techniques will benefit you, your family and your community. As you experience the personal benefits of being free from worry and doubt, it is natural to wonder about the possibilities of how the science of sleep could further transform your life. You are ready to explore the concepts of yoga nidra.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

•Rest and relaxation exercises are cleansing techniques. Rest removes dullness and inertia while relaxation removes restlessness and anxiety.

•Rest and relaxation are important prerequisites to good sleep. If you go to sleep anxious and restless, your quality of sleep will suffer.

ACTION ITEMS

•Practice one full round of alternate nostril breathing each day for 11 days and observe the effect.

•Practice the 61-point relaxation exercise daily until you can complete the exercise regularly without falling asleep.

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Chapter8

Yoga Nidra:

The Science of Yogic Sleep

Learning and practicing relaxation techniques are the experiential prerequisites to learning about sleep and rest. Building on what you have learned in the previous chapter, we are now

going to explore the relationship between sleep, sleep cycles, rest and a yoga technique called yoga nidra (yogic sleep). You are going to learn how to have better sleep than ever before. This skill has countless benefits, both psychologically and practically. When you are able to wake up feeling refreshed and alert, happiness will naturally come easier. When you have the ability to attain deep rest and therefore can sleep less, you will have more time for your life and you will feel less stressed.

Rest and relaxation are the prelude to sleep. With the dullness and worries of the day removed, you can go to sleep easily and reap full benefits from your time asleep. To learn the science of sleep, you must first practice the skills of resting and relaxation. Rest is achieved by using a technique to cleanse and clear away dullness and inertia.

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Sleepiness is that dullness. Yoga science recommends specific breathing techniques to remove tiredness and dullness. These methods provide rest and renewal to your mind and body.

Relaxation is achieved by using a technique to cleanse and clear away anxiety and restlessness. Any technique that o ers relaxation and rest must be a cleansing technique.

When dullness and inertia take the wind out of your sails, leaving you motionless at your desk, you know you need help to get through your day. Instead of running for co ee or a cigarette, this is the moment that resting techniques can bring you back to life. There have been way too many moments when my personal levels of fatigue were so high that I feared I might fall asleep at my own seminar. When I find myself so exhausted that gravity seems to have doubled its strength, I quicken my pace so that I can last until the next 15minute intermission.

All you need is 7-16 minutes to rest so deeply that you can get your wind back. Your clarity and enthusiasm will be fully charged in just a few minutes. Thanks to this technique, the long days of my seminars never defeat me. I call it the ‘real power nap.’

REST AND THE REAL POWER NAP

Here is the theory behind this technique. Your enthusiasm and attention span can become dull from the inability to process incoming substances and information. Holistically, good digestion means that you are able to digest food and beverages, as well as information and sensory stimulation. Feeling heavy and dull in the head can be caused by your diet, by a lack of exercise or by a sensory overload of information and emotions. Likewise, the digestive fire in your abdomen – specifically the region of your solar plexus – can be stimulated by breathing diaphragmatically in a slow, strong continuous manner. As your lungs and abdomen expand and contract, like a gentle bellows, the pranic

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power within you starts to rebuild. In 7 – 16 minutes, you will start to feel alert and vital again.

The internal friction of your respiratory diaphragm will create enough heat to burn away the dullness and inertia that makes you sleepy and slow. The following technique can be performed in a chair, but once again, laying supine on the floor is optimal.

Here is the technique. Imagine that you are in a situation where sleepiness is trying to control you and becoming drowsy is completely unacceptable. Let us also agree that you are in reasonably good health and you are usually well rested. If your sleepiness is associated with driving a vehicle, you must stop and rest. This is not the time to use these techniques for the very first time. Master the following system and then with full agility you can apply it in your life as you see reasonable and safe.

First, get up and move around. Swing your arms, do some toe touches, and breathe deeply. Drink a couple of glasses of clean water. Find a quiet place where you can lay down for a few minutes without being interrupted. Lay in the corpse pose* and use a small pillow under your head. Breathe through your nose in a smooth, slow, continuous fashion. Allow your abdomen to rise with each inhalation and fall with every exhalation.

The essence of this exercise is to increase the pranic pressure and digestive fire in your solar plexus. This process will remove dullness from both your mind and body. It is simple to do: breathe with a feeling of strength and sturdiness in your breath. Exaggerate the movements of your abdomen as you breathe. Visualize fire filling your entire abdominal cavity and see every inhalation fanning the flames of this fire.

As the visualization of fire becomes natural, relax your intensity and let the process become automatic. Continue to lay in a comfortable fashion and observe the flow of your breath and the motion of your abdomen. Let the floor completely support your body.

* The corpse pose is illustrated in Chapter 5.

Your mind is your servant and your best friend.

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There is a secondary benefit to this practice when you add one final component – the time factor. Ask your mind to let you rest for the 7–16 minute duration of this prac-

tice and to, more importantly, have your mind gently alert you when the time is completed. Choose a precise number of minutes and direct your mind to awaken you at the end of that time. Your mind is

your servant and your best friend when such qualities are cultivated. Trusting your mind to watch over you and to alert you on schedule is a very fine way to develop a powerful relationship with your mind. Make your mind reliable. As the two of you become best friends, wonderful things can happen.

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The Power of Napping

Napping is often taken as a sign of laziness. However, will you get more done if you struggle through hours of work when you are exhausted, or if you opt to take a nap and return to work refreshed and enthusiastic? Throughout history, many famously productive people have chosen the latter, so if you would too, you are in good company. Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Johannes Brahms, Buckminster Fuller, Salvador Dali and many others all used napping to increase their productivity in their work.23

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THE ANATOMY OF SLEEP

Both modern science and the science of Ayurveda agree that you can learn to sleep more e ciently and more skillfully. Modern scientific studies show that sleeping too long can leave you feeling lethargic. Likewise, Ayurveda stresses the importance of waking up on time, specifically before sunrise. Modern science has shown the importance of not eating immediately before bedtime. Ayurveda concurs and encourages a 12-hour fast between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Having a firm understanding of modern science’s approach to sleep, as well as the Ayurvedic approach, will give you a comprehensive understanding of how to prevent and overcome sleep ailments and chronic tiredness.

“The alarm clock is ruining my life,” my patient Calvin said in all seriousness. “I travel constantly because of my work through two di erent time zones and I have to meet my customers on time.” He called me a few days earlier introducing himself as a sales executive with a sleep disorder. Having an older sister who had some addictive

Understanding your sleep cycle reveals newfound freedoms that are not commonly known today.

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issues with sleep medication, he was seeking a natural alternative.

I had never had anyone make such a criminal accusation of an alarm clock. I let him plead his case, “I sleep lightly all the time, but what happens is I wake up around five o’clock in the morning and I feel fine,” continued Calvin. “But even though I am wide awake, I think I need more rest. Just as soon as I lie back down and fall asleep, the alarm goes o . I hit the snooze button and roll over.”

“When the alarm buzzes again, it really is time for me to get up and then I feel terrible. Twenty or 30 minutes earlier I was brighteyed and ready to go. But after hitting the snooze button (sometimes 2-3 times), everything seems to get worse.”

Calvin’s problem was easy to explain and he was shocked when he heard the simple truth. Like almost everyone who comes to my door, he had no knowledge of the modern understanding or the Ayurvedic understanding, of the anatomy of sleep. Once he gained a foundation of understanding, he could easily adjust his sleeping style

to provide maximal rest and an optimal attitude come morning.

Understanding your sleep cycle reveals newfound freedoms that are not commonly known today. The power of this knowledge will diminish or prevent the stranglehold of dullness and fatigue. Tiredness can

be so overpowering that it can drag you into unconsciousness, even while driving your car. Gaining mastery over sleep will eliminate such helplessness and will further improve your waking state the following morning. Feeling helpless to the moods and manner of how you fall asleep will also limit your options of how you will feel as you wake.

When you understand exactly what happens during sleep, then you will be able to understand why the alarm clock is a bad idea. You

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will also come to understand why a healthy human being only needs about three hours and fifteen minutes of deep sleep and rest. Yes, you read that correctly.

When you fall asleep, you enter stage 1 of sleep where you spend 1-5 minutes gently relaxing. As you fall deeper asleep, you enter stage 2 and typically remain there for 40-50 minutes. Falling deeper into a resting state, stage 3 brings deep muscular relaxation and rest, lasting 7-15 minutes. Finally, stage 4 brings the deepest amount of rest and lasts about 12 minutes. From stage 4 you then proceed back to stage 3, then to stage 2, and then to REM (rapid eye movement sleep) which lasts about 10-30 minutes and is associated with dreaming. REM sleep, however, is not associated with muscle relaxation or rest. Then this 90-120 minute cycle repeats 2-5 times each night, culminating with a few shorter cycles which alternate between REM sleep and the second stage of sleep.

The most important characteristics of the sleep cycle are the stage 3 and stage 4 sleep periods. These are the times when you get the deepest, most restful sleep. Therefore, you really only need those two stages to feel rested; the other stages do not yield rest. The reason so many people sleep for 8 hours and wake up feeling exhausted is because they spend most of their night in sleep stages 1, 2 and REM.