I used to think that only doing yoga asana without studying scripture was limiting – until the day I ‘got’ my first pose through doing the pose alone. It started with a personal challenge to hold each side of Warrior II for 5 minutes, then incrementally up to 20. I managed the first 5 minutes quite easily but, had to go beyond my usual abilities of concentration to reach beyond that, especially when it came to doing the second side!  Somewhere in midst of this challenge, I allowed necessary shifts in my stance to allow the pose to flow through me rather than making such effort at holding my body in the pose – and the difference was magic! Suddenly holding my arms was not a burden but a necessary outflow of the incredible energy that was being generated in my naval and heart centers. Energy rose from my feet through my legs and fed these centers while concentration on my fingertips activated the Ajna center between my brows. I realized that I could control the flow of energy by pumping from the Base Chakra.

During this time, I had been struggling with some unresolved questions about the Bhagavad-Gita – how could the author of the Gita place a metaphysical treatise that emphasized non-violence in the midst of a huge war? Knowing that subsequent events in the Mahabharata involved Arjuna fighting and winning the war for the Pandavas, how could I reconcile this apparent spiritual quagmire? I had given this a lot of thought, but it was not until I was fully able to surrender to Virabhadrasana II that the answer was

revealed in a way that not only addressed the concerns of my mind, but gave me a deeper understanding that I can only describe as including my body and spirit in the ‘knowing.’

In fact it wasn’t until a later time that I connected the pose with the questions and it was quite a surprise to find that what I had thought could only be solved by the intellect had  had been resolved through asana! Would I have had the same insight without studying scripture? Perhaps not, but this experience definitely reinforced the completeness of each stage in studying Yoga and marks the time I began to form more definite ideas about the potential of movement in the experience of learning. 

Thinking back to my school days, I vividly recall the frustration of sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a classroom much more than any of my lessons! I have found how helpful taking a walk or doing a bit of Yoga could be when trying to sort out a conundrum at work, but never made specific connections in using movement as a problem-solving tool.

Luckily for thousands of school children, a gentleman named Paul Dennison, PhD., dedicated his life to studying the relationship between posture, body movement and brain function. Dennison was an educational therapist who along with his wife Gail developed the field of Educational Kinesiology in the 1970’s. The associated Brain Gym program (www.braingym.org) includes a series of physical movements that was originally developed as a method to assist the learning disabled to learn more effectively. I recently completed the first leg of the Brain Gym program and found that the movements are  based on Yoga postures, Acupressure and Applied Kinesiology and generally, proper credit is given to the source of the movement.

Like Yoga, Brain Gym has found application in many fields from education to athletics and the performing arts. Brain Gym movements are used widely in the British educational system, (although there has been recent controversy about the science behind some of their claims). Many of the exercises are to said to enhance neurological connections between both sides of the brain through the midline to enable better sensory integration. In my limited experience, I was able to verify that some of the exercises allowed an increased flow of energy in the areas specified in the literature as well as proving out positively in the more subjective ‘before’ and ‘after’ reviews of the particular skill you are trying to improve.

I have to admit I used to feel annoyance when I saw that Yoga was integrated within a ‘product,’ or that the emphasis was only on a part of the discipline and not the whole. But, I have come to realize that within each small part, the whole is capable of being revealed – the ground is prepared. For this, I can only be grateful and amazed!