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Buddha’s Jewels (vegetarian)- “mustgo” |
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Directions Serve over rice with any asian sauce of choice (sweet & sour, sesame, teriyaki, etc.) “MustGo” Recipe * 1 cake of tofu, crumbled Directions Serve over rice with any asian sauce of choice (sweet & sour, sesame, teriyaki, etc.) |
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The shoulders represent our feelings and thoughts about what we are doing and how we are doing it. This is to say that the shoulders hold all the responsibilities in our lives and how we feel about those responsibilities. So, when we suddenly begin something different in our lives, such as starting a yoga practice, the shoulders sometimes revolt by saying “no, not another responsibility to burden!” What a regular yoga practice does, however, is teaches the other parts of the body to share the burdens evenly, and once alignment is learned, the shoulders find relief. For example, once students learn to pull out of the shoulders in up-dog or down-dog, the legs begin to take more of the burden of the weight and the low back and shoulders can release. However, until the other body parts can learn to “take the backpack from the shoulders” the only way to deal with the shoulder pain is to modify the practice, sometimes drastically, and look at how we are dealing with the responsibilities within our lives. One of the most common pains in the shoulder manifests from the rotator cuff, the muscles and tendons that connect with upper arm bone to the shoulder blade, helping to hold the ball of the humerus bone into the shoulder socket. Rotator cuff injuries can be as painful as feeling like your arm is being ripped out of its socket, which is your body’s way of saying, “I’m holding too much, let go of some responsibility!” Thus, extreme modification is the best lesson any yoga student can learn as it is the ultimate of humility, of letting go, and finding sukha (surrender). This is not to say that one should stop yoga practice and totally rest the injury to heal. Complete rest may actually result in “frozen shoulder” or atrophy of the muscles around the shoulder while the tendons heal, setting the practitioner back further than where they began. Doctors usually prescribe physical therapy (glorified yoga poses) as treatment for rotator cuff injuries. PT helps to maintain flexibility in the joint, build muscle around the joint to protect the tendons once they heal. Rest is key, so avoid poses that put excess baggage on the shoulders, they don’t need any more responsibility, but work to build the muscles in the rest of the body and train the body to take the burden away from the shoulders. Yet, continuing to stretch and strengthen the shoulder muscles with simple stretches and modified binds can make all the difference. When shoulder pain becomes chronic, it is time to look at the deeper spiritual issues surrounding responsibility within your life. Pain inside the shoulder joint is symbolic of the body’s resentment for “carryiing the world on your shoulders” and not wanting to do so anymore. What are the responsibilities that have become burdens and developed into resentments? What are you “fed up with” and “tired of carrying”? Keep in mind, that shoulder issues are usually representative of responsibilities you have held for other people, of responsibilities that have been placed on you by other people. What can you do to lighten your load? How can you “pass the buck” or delegate a little more? Typically, for those of us with shoulder issues have lived our lives with an element of “If I don’t do it myself, it doesn’t get done right” the shoulder is starting to tell us to let go of the control a little bit. Things may not get done the way you would have done them, but the ultimate results, the big picture, is the same. For some of us, these daily responsibilities have manifested into a comfort level with the discomfort of our lives, and it is when the world around us starts to change that our shoulders start to scream. At this point, we have become so comfortable with our responsibilities that feelings of anger, guilt, resentment, are suppressed and feel more like “duty” or “purpose”. Addressing this depth of the issue is a little more difficult than simply surrendering control or restructuring responsibility, although surrender is still important. Once one has become complacent with discomfort the key to finding peace in surrender lies in reflecting on one’s own hidden dreams, fantasies and desires and how those dreams have been relinquished to the desires of others. Then, it is about learning that it is okay to be “selfish” and start pursuing those dreams once again. The idea is to give up “caretaking for others, and to ask, “what do I want” over and over until a true answer, unrelated to anyone else’s desires, is found, and then to pursue that desire wholeheartedly. No matter what the level of pain, when the shoulder hurts, it is saying, “Take off the backpack” and “stop carrying the S*** of other people.” it is time to really fully take care of yourself and fulfill your own inner most dreams and desires. |
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I recently saw a television commercial for rotating push-up handles that promise the “perfect push-up.” Of course, the ad showed several well toned men (and one woman) performing the push ups with ease and grace. It talked about how a US Navy Seal designed the tools using the latest in biomechanics and engineering with ultimate results. What I noticed though, was that as the handles rotated with each push-up, the elbows pulled into the side body setting the upper torso into “chatarunga dandasana pose”. These “patent-pending” rotating handles were a way of teaching the body how to perform an ages old yoga pose! In Sansrit, chaturanga translates to “having four limbs” and in epic poetry it often holds the meaning “army” from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata, referring to four divisions of an army: elephants, chariots, cavalry, and infantry. Dandasana means “staff pose”, thus chaturanga dandasana comes to mean “four legged staff pose”. So imagine that this pose carries all the power and energy of the four limbs of an army, as solid as a staff, prepared for battle. No wonder this pose is so physically challenging! It requires drawing upon the power of elephants, the grace of movement of chariots, the mobility and offensive power of the cavalry, and the fitness, strength, and character of the infantry. The first thing newer yoga practitioners say to me when I ask them to try the alignment of this pose is that they lack the arm strength, which makes perfect sense in that the word “army” comes from the same roots as the word “arm.” However, to draw upon the four limbs of the army, one must access the energy of the entire being, particularly the power that resides in the torso and core. When done properly, the arms in this pose serve mostly as a foundation, but the strength that holds the pose is found in the core. As with any warrior, the armor (also from the root word for arm) is the external protection, but the true strength and power of the warrior comes from within, from the soul. Alignment
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