Karma Yoga - in service to others

Kanyas Kitchen

How much did you spend this Christmas on gifts, food, drink etc? How much can you afford to give?

Karma yoga is the yoga of action. In karma yoga we devote our actions for the benefit of others and the world or, according to our beliefs, we dedicate the fruits of the work to God (or our universal spirit). It is selfless service, where we expect no reward. We move towards 'non-attachment' to the results of our actions. Eventually we may experience that we are not the doer but that the work is done through us.


It was the avowed intent of Swami Satyananda , who passed Dec 2009, that no child in his panchayat (district) would go to bed hungry. He said, on many occasions, that he would feed every child at least once every day.

To this end, a vast warehouse was bought and renovated by the Satyananda ashram in India to be the dining hall & store (and kitchen) to feed 1500 boys and girls, who would otherwise go hungry Named Kanya Kitchen, the project is now fully operational. Here, the 1500 kanyas (girls) and batuks (boys) who already receive ashram care, education and training, are fed daily.

Sw Satsangi with the children

Sponsors are needed to maintain this activity. It costs between Rs25,000 and Rs100,000 (£360 - £1430) per day, depending on the menu. For an ‘average’ meal, comprising rice, sabje (vegetables), dahl, pappadom and a sweet, the cost is in the region of Rs60,000 – Rs70,000 (£860 - £1000).

As an ongoing tribute to the life and works of Sri Swamiji, I am dedicating all the monies from my January yoga class to help raise the funds required to feed these children for three or more days. All funds raised through yoga will be matched with a donation from my PR business, effectively doubling the donation.

PLEASE attend the January class, and bring your friends and family too, by doing so you are helping to save children's lives and performing your own Karma Yoga.

I will give the money to Satyaprakash at SYC Birmingham , who will be travelling to Rikhia in February 2011 and will carry the donation by hand (thus safe arrival at destination is guaranteed).

If you have the means, you may wish to give directly the money needed to feed the children for one day - I will gladly advise on how best to do this.

What is your relationship with food?

We are getting fatter: fact. Men are doing worse than women, in the UK they have put on 16lbs over the last 15 years. Why? We are eating too much. More than we need to function. More than we can burn off with the exercise that we don't do. We are eating to satisfy our appetite not our hunger. We have forgotten what hunger is.

Our appetites are the abnormal cravings we have, 'perverted' tastes - for food or alcohol etc. Hunger is the normal demand for food. Hunger is about nourishment: food means nourishment. Appetite is felt in the belly - an emptiness, a gnawing, an 'all-gone' feeling. Hunger is felt as a sensation in the mouth, throat and salivary glands. The nerves here, at the thought of wholesome food, manifest a desire to get to work. We have forgotten what hunger feels like (but just think back to the 'food mother used to cook', the delight of hunger when we were little children).

I teach yoga. Often I teach a very slow, mindful form of yoga. People say 'I can't lose weight doing that!'. And they give up class. But with movements that are simple, slow and controlled, the emphasis is on awareness - awareness of the breath, awareness of the body, awareness of feelings in the body, awareness of space in the body. We focus on feelings in the body - knowing that many people (especially those with weight 'issues') deny the existence of their body.

We are often constantly caught up in our head, consumed with the embarrassment and discomfort of being overweight. But this is the very essence of yoga (particularly satyananda yoga) - bringing awareness into each and every action and reaction. Slowly students learn to become attuned to their body - to the feelings of tension, the feelings of heaviness and the tingling sensations. By moving mindfully into postures, they can feel the stretch of muscles, the pattern of breath and even feel their heart beating. It re-connects them to their body - re-defines the whole relationship they have with their body-  so that they see themselves as more than a 'fat, amorphous lump'.

Eating is our first line of defence against pain - the pain of feeling vulnerable. We eat too much to numb the pain. But yoga (and other mindfulness practices) open us up to this in a wider awareness, so that we can absorb into it and move through it. And through this we reach joy, gratitude and wholeness.

And then to our surprise find that we don't eat so much, our appetites have lessened. We eat more slowly and mindfully, perhaps uncsonsciously aware of the prana or energy that our tongue, mouth and teeth are absorbing from the food in our mouth. We are drawn to foods that have stronger energy - natural, wholesome foods (and feel more and more sick at the though of a McDonalds meal!!). And our system is more efficient at absorbing the energy from food, and we need less anyway.

How much food have you eaten this Christmas? How much did you need? How much do you need to give up?

Why Connection Matters

Watch this video: it may change your life! Connection matters: we are neurobiologically wired to function for this, it is our purpose, why we are here. Just listen when you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak; when you ask people about stories of belonging they will tell you about when they have been excluded. Many of us are disconnected. Recent research indicates that people just don't care about other people any more; whilst the researchers conclude that this is due to social isolation or perhaps not reading enough fiction. I believe it is down to our inability to feel connected.

The fear of disconnection reveals itself in the emotion of shame. 'I'm not worthy of connection' or 'I'm not good enough'. Which gives us a catch 22 situation: because to be connected as a human being and feel a strong sense of love and belonging, we need to open ourselves to 'excrutiating vulnerability' (sic). For connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to really be seen.

In Rene Brown's research, the 'wholehearted' as she refers to those who have a deep sense of connection, love and belonging, have one simple difference to those who really struggle for this: they believe they are worth of it.  It is our fear that we're not worthy of connection that keeps us out of connection.

To become 'wholehearted' all you need is:

1. Courage - its true meaning being 'whole heart', and the courage to be imperfect
2. Compassion - but be compassionate with yourself first, and only then can you have compassion for others
3. Connection - but this only comes from a willingness to be your authentic self, a willingness to let go of who you should be and be who you really are (can you see why you need point 2) above first!!)
4. Vulnerability - and fully embrace it! believe that what makes you vulnerable, makes you beautiful

This means that you need to have a willingness to say 'I love you' first: even when you don't know the outcome. To be willing to invest in a relationship that may not work out.

Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear but it is the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging and love.

But we have the most elaborate defences. We numb ourselves to stop ourselves feeling vulnerable, and to help ourselves deal with it we eat too much or drink too much .... But in doing this, we numb joy, gratitude, happiness and then we feel more miserable so we eat or drink more!

We also use blame. We blame others and take secret delight in attributing blame, because blame is a way to discharge our pain and discomfort. (just watch political discourse in action to see this!).
And we pretend that what we do, doesn't have a huge impact on others.

And we do all this because we want to make the uncertain, certain. We can't live with grey, or 'neti neti' (not this, not that). We need black and white, we need 'I'm right, you're wrong'.

When all we need to do is to let ourselves be seen - deeply and vulnerably. To love with our whole hearts even though there are no guarantees. To practice gratitude and joy as an everyday experience.

And to believe that we are enough.

What Lies Beneath: Panic Attacks

"Anxiety is the state of twentieth-century man." Norman Mailer

If this is true, perhaps panic disorder is its 21st century progeny? Panic attacks are horrible: they come on suddenly, for no apparent cause, characterised by a severe fear that can peak within 10 mins. This is accompanied by symptoms such as excessive sweating, nausea, disturbing thoughts about harming oneself or others, fear of loss of control or that you are becoming insane.

For me, the Edvard Munch painting 'The Scream' - pictured right - epitomises this condition, which both men and women suffer and which can have a negative effect on a person's life. Many sufferers struggle with this condition for many years, and can give up hope of ever getting better or refuse to believe their condition is treatable. In many ways this is understandable, when this disorder has you in its grip, it is a very scary place to be.

Nevertheless, this is the most treatable mental disorder. And treatment is very effective. When I am working with my clients, regardless of what condition they have, I tell them 'it won't last'. Of course, I know they will get better, but often people experience rapid changes in a session or two, and can get very 'attached' to this change. And of course, such change indicates that 'the system' is learning. Whilst changes do happen quickly, it is important that people know that the system has a mind of its own that needs time and practice to make lasting change. Otherwise, they will too easily become disheartened.

So What Lies Beneath Panic Disorder/Attacks?
Rather than a 'mental disorder' this is a disorder of our system. A fault in the operating system, like a virus on the hard drive. It is a product of living in a chronic emergency mode of attention: the sympathetic nervous system is in permanent overdrive. Like a car that has the accelerator stuck to the floor. Sometimes this chronic engagement in the 'fear, flight or fight' mode is the 'system's' way of keeping fearful or high-intensity memories and feelings at bay. And often the cause of panic attacks is routed in a highly stressful or traumatic event.

When the accelerator is stuck to the floor like this, we live in a state of chronic narrow focused attention. Our brain is in overdrive, with high intensity thoughts that are one tracked, tunnel vision thinking, focused on the fear. Our body is flooded with the stress hormones of cortisol, noradrenaline etc which shut down non-essential blood supply, such as that to higher regions of the brain. So we are actually less able to think 'big picture' and therefore less able to problem solve and put things in perspective. And this narrow focus keeps us in the high state of anxiety; we literally can't see the wood for the trees.

Treatment
But the nervous system is very malleable and these chronic symptoms can be reversed. In order to release the long-held anxiety we need to educate our system into moving into a softer, more 'open focused' way of being. This involves sedating the sympathetic nervous system and tonifying the parasympathetic nervous system.

Embodied Living works initially on the somatic mind, using practices such as:

• yin yoga and yoga therapy - calming, nurturing and supportive practices
• breath work - re-educating the breathing system
• self-hypnosis and deep relaxation techniques
• mindfulness-based practices such as Open Focus and antar mouna - to help us shift our style of attention
• biofeedback - using heart rate variability and brain wave monitoring to coach the system into coherence

Once our body-mind and physiology have normalised, and the system is more in balance, we can then work on the cognitive mind. By working with NLP and cognitive behaviour techniques we can learn to change our thinking. And psychotherapy can also help us to understand the emotional causes of anxiety.