Hello all, first time commenting here.
I was dismayed by Dr. Caplan's avoidance of calling out abusive people in positions of power. She stated something along the lines that people like Pema Chodron eventually benefited from Trungpa's abuse. She also states that she has no problem calling out something if it is bad or evil but fails to do so when asked. Very duplicitous. Yes positive things can come out of terrible circumstances but is that any reason to avoid calling actions, that are in direct conflict with our culture rules, evil?
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:
From the spiritual seeker's standpoint, what relationship is there between the body and what we might do with it (like with yoga poses or breathing exercises), and connecting with extended consciousness/deep spirituality?
I wanted to hear more of how Dr. Caplan utilizes yoga and psychology as I have a deep interest in this area. Yoga, as Dr. Caplan alluded to briefly has come to mean a lot of (marketable) things so much so that the term is almost useless as a descriptor. Let us use Patanjali's definition: "Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind." So yoga starts when the mind stops but how do we get there? Patanjali laid out a road map in the Yoga Sutras. He does not describe different asanas but states the conditions that must be met for something to be considered an asana, namely steady, stationary, motionless, and comfortable. This is interesting because many people assume that when they become steady, stationary, motionless and comfortable that their mind should calm down. When it doesn't they note that when their body is active, their mind calms down so they generally gravitate toward doing something and calling it "meditative." The simple way to think of it is that when the body is active the mind begins to disengage. When the mind is active the body tends to disengage. So why didn't Patanjali say "lift some weights and go on a run and your mind will calm down."? I believe that it is because we don't actually unwind all the dross in our nervous system/brain when we engage in more activity or try to concentrate on some activity...we just continue to repress it. So when we stop "doing" for a period of time our minds are going to rage and try to get us to do anything to avoid confronting that which is repressed or that which may produce discomfort if we contemplate it. This non doing allows things to come up and pass.
Consider that the criteria of steady stationary, motionless and comfortable are generally not met in any yoga classes. People are pressing to go further or contort their bodies or they try to hold their breath longer or make their breathing slower. Practicing this way is just furthering exactly what most of us do all day long which is to attempt to control, manipulate, achieve, win, avoid losing etc which are not all bad but one needs a sabbatical from all of this. If you approach yoga like you are going to achieve something, you might get flexible or strong but that is about it....and what is the difference between approaching yoga in the "doing mindset" and calisthenics? If you use the achievement roadmap you may end up in a completely different location than where Patanjali's roadmap is pointing to.
In my experience of using asanas with the aforementioned criteria I have found that it helps unwind events in my life that created tension be it small things that happened through the day or major events. While practicing, I cease trying to steer the boat and just ride along allowing whatever to come up. I should note that it seems that the experience of things "coming up" often takes a few different pathways depending on whether we tend to be more auditory, visual, kinesthetic, olfactory. I tend to feel tension in my body, others many note that short sporadic images pop up...one person I showed yoga to in this way had a distinct smell of mothballs from her grandmother's house come up. She jumped out of shavasana and didn't want to practice any longer. As one practices there is increased time between the sensory things popping up and sometimes one's consciousness kind of shuts down. It is kind of a sleep state but one isn't really sleeping, there is an awareness present. When I come out of a state like this I feel quite rejuvenated but it doesn't happen every time. I don't control it I just create the initial conditions for it to happen as elucidated by Patanjali. If it happens great, if not, great. It is nothing to be achieved.
I suspect that the physical body takes on tension as a protective response to stress/trauma ("If I just guard myself better I won't get hurt"). Yoga works to allow that armor to dissolve which allows a person to regain their ability to choose (instead of everything being a reaction to the world)...which is really to say, it allows a person to embody more fully the dynamic range of human potential. I think that yoga according to Patanjali is a method to allow a person's system to heal itself. Yoga practiced this way is like digestion. We masticate and swallow the food and that is where our conscious control of digestion ends. Our body knows just what to do with the food if we let it do its thing. In the same manner if we give the right initial conditions to our body, it will begin to digest the traumas that are embedded in our nervous systems. I do think that as these things are digested that we begin to see the world more clearly as it is rather than through the glasses colored by trauma. I think allowing things to come and go and creating the initial conditions for the mind to sort of switch off regularly may pave the way for odd phenomena to happen such as hearing in one's mind an odd word that another person is thinking of (that is not related to any conversation). It seems that as the dross is processed and removed the mind can more clearly reflect things and kind of know things at times that are weird or unexplainable as to how one knew that thing. But that either happens or it doesn't...it isn't something one can aim to do.