Teaching Hatha Yoga: Religion and Western Culture

When you teach Hatha Yoga, you are asked many questions. Although public awareness of Yoga, and its teachings, has increased, many people are just discovering some of the benefits within the many styles of Yoga. Therefore, you have to be prepared for the unexpected questions that arise about the mysteries of Yoga.

Once in a while, the question of religion does come up. Many times, Yoga teachers are asked if they are a Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist. To the public’s amazement, many Yoga teachers come from all of the major religions in the world. There is no single religion that all Yoga teachers participate in.

How can this be? Some Gurus preach that Yoga should be founded within a particular religion. Some Yoga teachers read the Rig Veda, Bhagavad Gita, and speak Sanskrit words, so they must be covertly teaching Hinduism, or some other religion, right? Wrong – some Yoga teachers do teach religion in their classes, and some do not.

If your Yoga teacher has the Vedas, Torah, New Testament, Holy Quran, and the Gnostic Gospels, in his or her library, what does that mean? It means that your Yoga teacher likes to read, study, and does not have a closed mind. That is all it means, unless your Yoga teacher preaches religion as part of his or her practice.

If a Yoga teacher does preach religion within Yoga classes, this should be easy enough to see and hear. In Yoga studios that reside in the Americas and Europe, this may not be what most Hatha Yoga students are seeking. Each student has the right to leave, but the public should be made aware that a Yoga studio is conducting religious classes.

Many of these potential Yoga students are not seeking religious conversion, religious instruction, and live in a culture with a strict separation of religion from government. This means that religion in the West is often compartmentalized.

For example: If a concerned doctor recommends Yoga to a patient with back problems – the patient is not being referred to a Yoga studio for religious instruction.

Therefore, if you teach a form of religious Yoga in the West, be honest about it. Most students, from western cultures, are in Hatha Yoga classes for the physical and mental aspects.

If you want to teach Yoga as spiritual health, get the proper training first, and give the public “fair warning.” Teaching good virtues is one thing, but teaching religion to your Yoga students is quite another. This is the “line in the sand” that some Yoga teachers should never forget.

The answers to spiritual enlightenment are within all religions, but it is up to Yoga students to pursue their own religion and find the answers to their spiritual health. There is no single “man made path” to spiritual health, enlightenment, or union. This is a myth that, as a species, we never seem to learn.

Throughout our history, Holy wars are always justified by both sides. Of course, the other side is always less human, less understanding, evil, and ignorant of the true path. “The world would be a better pace without the unbelievers;” is always a good battle cry.

Religion is too volatile a subject to discuss within a multi-cultural Hatha Yoga class. Therefore, if you are going to mix any religion with Yoga practice, it should be taught within a sectarian atmosphere.

© Copyright 2006 – Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

Interview with Thom Hartmann author of “Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture”

Culture · Hatha · Religion · Teaching · Western · Yoga

Acquire Perfect Pitch

Acquire Perfect Pitch

Acquiring perfect pitch can be very good to musicians and those who loves music.  If you acquire perfect pitch, you will be able to:

Tune an instrument with no assist

Ascertain if a piece of music is being played in the right key

Name any instrument out of tune

Write songs and melodies in your head easily

Discover and name a chord by ear

Understand the key signature of any piece of music by ear

See if a pitch is flat or sharp

Improvise easily and with confidence

Increase your appreciation of music overall

Sing any note from memory

Play you preferred songs by ear

Nonetheless there are some downsides when you acquire perfect pitch.  Many people with perfect pitch find it difficult to enjoy music. This happens because once you acquire perfect pitch, you will be capable to hear all of a musical performer’s mistakes and hear when they are out of tune. In addition, pieces of music that are not played in their original keys often sound out of tune to people with perfect pitch.

But what is perfect pitch?  Perfect pitch, also known as absolute pitch, is the power to distinguish the pitch of a tone by listening to it.  If you acquire perfect pitch, you will be able to distinguish any note just by listening to it.

Another important ability is relative pitch.  Relative pitch includes using a reference pitch to decide the pitch of another tone.  Relative pitch is much easier to learn and will help you acquire perfect pitch.  Even so, you do not need to know relative pitch in order to acquire perfect pitch.

But is it possible to acquire perfect pitch?  With some teaching and training, it is quite attainable to acquire perfect pitch.  Nonetheless, it is significant to pick out a well known and effective program to aid you acquire perfect pitch.

The Pure Pitch Method has been acknowledged by musicians all around the world as the fastest and easiest approach to acquire perfect pitch anywhere!

The Pure Pitch Method encompasses 39 daily lessons which cover exercises designed to strengthen your inner ear and enable you to acquire perfect pitch and relative pitch with ease! Not only will you learn how to determine any note by name, but also any interval, or common chord!

What is also great about this course is that you don’t need to understand how to read music or any music theory. All the essentials are explained within the curriculum!

After you start using The Pure Pitch Method to acquire perfect pitch you will see a whole new world of musical possibilities open up to you. Not only that but you will be seen by others around you as special and intelligent just because you took the time to acquire perfect pitch. Who doesn’t want to experience that rise of sureness?

Acquire · Perfect · Pitch

Rhythms of Life

Copyright (c) 2008 Mary Ann Copson

?There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.?(–Chogyam Trungpa

Seasonal Rhythms

The dynamics of your body extends in an expanding range and your physiology is linked to the world and universe at large. Your body changes with the seasons, with the weather, with the atmospheric conditions. Many people can tell in their bones when a change in weather is coming. Human bodies are in synch with the gravitational forces, planetary shifts, the cold and heat, light and dark, humidity and all the other variations that the seasons bring. They respond and shift their functioning according to these natural dynamics. Your body increases and decreases certain functions in response to surrounding influences.

Biological and Geophysical Rhythms and Frequencies

All living organisms are composites of different rhythms and frequencies.

The heart beats approximately once per second but this rate speeds up in the morning and slows down at night; the electrical activity of the human brain cycles in fractions of a second; breathing occurs about sixteen times per minute; many hormones are released in pulses lasting several hours.

Across all species the natural daily rhythmic cycles run in twenty to twenty-eight hours for a natural day. The most conspicuous cycles in plants and animals are these daily rhythms (Circadian). They inter mesh with other cycles that are longer or shorter than a day.

Biological activities and processes are tied to lunar cycling as in monthly processes such as menstruation and also to the earth?s rotation around the sun as is seen in such yearly activities as hibernation, migration, and reproduction.

The seven day week has no obvious geophysical correlate but research suggests that this cultural convention may reflect deep biological rhythms. Seven day rhythms are seen in many illnesses, for example the common cold, and beard growth in men follows a seven day cycle.

Annual seasonal rhythms are less noticeable in humans than in other animals but they do exist. Secretion of the male hormone testosterone surges in the fall, sperm concentration and activity is highest in the winter, and rates of conception peak in the winter. More babies are born in August and September than in other months. Babies born in summer and fall tend to weigh slightly more than babies born in other seasons and they have a greater likelihood of survival. Miscarriages are greater in the fall.

Deaths also have a seasonal pattern. Fatal heart attacks are more common in winter. This is true even in climates that are mild such as Hawaii and also in the southern hemisphere where seasons are reversed. Winter months are the time of lower resistance to infections and of higher cholesterol levels.

Disorders and Seasonal Rhythms

It has been found that people who suffer from depression have skewed body rhythms and cycles. These may include the rhythms of sleep, body temperature, and hormone release. Seasonal rhythms have also come under scrutiny. Suicides peak in the spring usually in May. Admissions to mental hospital for depression also soar in the spring. There is another smaller surge in suicides and hospital admissions in the fall. An external environmental factor – the length of daylight -is believed to an influencing factor.

The Body Has a Master Clock

In the 1960?s researchers found the key generator of body rhythms. Injuring part of a tiny region at the center of the brain known as the hypothalamus caused the loss of many normal rhythms. The hypothalamus commands the sympathetic nervous system. It speeds up breathing and heart rate in moments of danger, regulates body temperature, stimulates appetite and reproduction and controls hormone secretion. Further research found that a critical area of the hypothalamus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus -SCN- a tiny cluster of nerve cells that sits on top of the optic chasm, is the body?s master clock. The SCN directs the body?s various rhythms to work together. The SCN uses daylight signals picked up by the eyes to direct each body rhythm to do its part at the appropriate time, day after day.

Seasonal Changes

Regardless of location, in traditional cultures, there was an awareness that they were continuously affected by the changing seasons. You may live longer and be more healthy if you adapt your health care to the natural rhythms of the earth. Learning to live within the seasonal fluctuations is believed to bring health, harmony and strength to the body. It also provides a natural timetable and rhythm for a good service check and health care program for maintenance and upkeep to prevent accumulated stress from degenerating body responses.

Many people get the flu in the shift from summer to fall. In the peak of winter many suffer from depressive moods. Some people find that if they drink fruit juices or eat a lot of fruit in the winter they will feel cold and damp and get a cold. When it is difficult to adjust from one season to the next our bodies may react through lowered immune responses that leave us more vulnerable to later illness.

Sometimes the body is a bit out of step with all the changes from one season to another. That?s why many people tend to get sick during those shifting times. Sometimes we fail to adapt our habits to be more compatible to our changing body functions in response to the seasonal changes. By being aware of some of these cyclical changes throughout the year we can support shifting body dynamics so as to assist the changes. We can also take advantage of these natural shifting points to expand those dynamics that are increasing/flowing and rest those that are decreasing/ebbing. Many traditional cultures have set up associations of food, drink, activities, energies, dress, organs of the body, and emotions that are related to and affected by the seasonal shifts.

Are You Connected With Your Natural Rhythms?

Your biological clock is set to cue you to certain kinds of activities during certain times of the day. Bodies have thousands of natural rhythms for every biological function. Your moods are regulated by your biological clock. Your brain energy is just like your other natural rhythms ? high at certain times of the day and low at other times of the day. Your energy and vitality follow the same natural ebb and flow. When you try to push through those natural rhythms you lose the temporal harmony of your biological clock and desynchronization, malaise, dysfunction and poor performance set in. You will run but you will never be your best.

When all your biological patterns are ebbing and flowing according to their natural rhythms your body is synchronized and performs at its peak. You will have effortless energy and vitality when you live in accordance with your circadian, diurnal, and seasonal rhythms.

Are you aware of any energy cycles that you have? Do you pay attention to these cycles and adjust your activities as needed?

Are you able to go inward and rest when needed, or are you more likely to resist and keep going?

Are you aware of changes in alertness and your thinking abilities and do you use this awareness advantageously?

Do you have the energy and passion for projects that you want to do?

When you must perform at your best do you remain calm, focused and positively energized regardless of the situation?

Are you able to naturally meet the challenges of a situation? Or does it all seem to be too much for you and you just get by as best as you can?

Can you enter a state of calmness, alertness, focus and positive energy whenever you need to regardless of the situation?

If you are worried or feeling upset can you set aside these feelings and be fully engaged in what is happening for you in the moment?

Do you have the energy and motivation to be involved in interesting and challenging situations that call for you to be your best and operate creatively?

Life · Rhythms