MASTERING THE BASICS OF YOGA

Articles In This Section:

· GETTING RELAXED WITH YOGA

· YOUR BODY ISN'T MADE TO DILL WITH THE STESSES

· OBSERVING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST

· YOU AND TENSION

· BEST YOGA POSITION FOR DEEP RELAXATION

· MASTERING THE BASICS OF YOGA

· yOUR BODY KNOWING WHAT YOU CAN HANDLE

As has already been said, you are not likely to achieve such a state on your first attempt, nor even the second. Most people make better progress in the end if, instead of trying to relax the entire body at once, they concentrate on some one part. Start, for instance, with an arm. Pretend it is a length of old rope. Let the shoulder fall inert, heavy, on the floor. Let the rest follow, all the way down the arm, until inertia has traveled through elbow, forearm, wrist and palm and the fingers feel like the rope's limp, raveled ends.

After you have done this several times, start concentrating on your legs. See if you can make your neck and spine feel like so much jelly. After a while relaxation will become a habit and you will no longer need to think of specific areas; you will have learned to relax the entire body as a coordinated unit. When that time comes, you will have learned to rest as you have never rested in your whole life; you will discover a totally new sense of well-being, alertness and serenity.

Once you have mastered the basic approaches, you will start developing a definite sequence, a routine for Deep Relaxation. It has been found that the most effective way to relax is to begin at the top and work down: Relax the head first— let go the face muscles, the jaw muscles, the eyeballs, the lips, the tongue. Pretend a slow current of water is flowing through you, cleansing your body of tension. Let it flow through your neck, down the shoulders into the arms, down the chest into the abdomen, down your spine and through your buttocks, your thighs, knees, calves and into your legs, trickling out finally through your toes. In the end, your body will have no more tone than the body of a rag doll.

But even after you have grown quite adept at doing all this, you will discover from time to time that muscle-groups are tensing up once more or that you simply have passed some by. They must be relaxed again, of course. Moreover, after you first feel yourself relax all over, you will find you are capable of repeating the process on a deeper level—it is as though you had walked into a very quiet, deep forest, rested awhile, then walked on to where the trees are denser still and the silence deeper. In the end you will be on the very verge of drowsiness, of total inertia, your mind virtually at a standstill. When you have reached that stage, you will be resting in every cell of your body.

Students usually ask how long the daily period of Deep Relaxation should last. There can be no hard and fast rule for this,

especially since time-span varies with quality: the deeper the degree of relaxation, the more benefit you derive from it and the less time you need. At first plan on fifteen minutes or even half an hour a day. Later on you will find even a ten-minute period beneficial. You will also discover that a few minutes' Deep Relaxation just as you are on the verge of getting tired but are not yet headed toward exhaustion is a wise rule. It will revitalize you, giving you second wind, whenever during the day your energies are flagging.