Solar and Luna, The Donald and The Raj

Dear Yogis

Gregor Maehle says that Alternate Nostril Breathing saved his life! From that statement we went on to the personality of Donald Trump and how the British colonised India!

Introduction: Believe it or not, you have one dominant nostril and one that is a little bit blocked. (Try and see.). The right nostril is known as the Surya/Solar ‘Nadi’ and the left nostril is known and the Ida/Luna ‘Nadi’. The right nostril powers left brain which is where our analytical, scientific, commercial, militaristic, power thinking resides as does our extroverted self. The left is where our holistic, intuitive, artistic, nurturing thinking resides as does our introverted, parasympathetic self. Our whole society is powered by our collective right nostril / left brain and preoccupation with power in some form. (Read this for a beautiful explanation.)

Right nostril breathing powers the fundamentalist mind. This type of personality has difficulty accepting views that are contrary to their own. This attitude is rife in society; you can hear it fueling radio talk shows!. The left nostril-dominant person has a relativistic mind and accepts everyone’s point of view.  The problem with this mind is that it is impossible to stand up against an oppressor. Gregor said ‘The tragedy of most people is they find it difficult to balance, and switch at a time when they need to switch.’ In ancient society people knew how to switch channels or change activity every 90-120 minutes.

Here is how we got to Donald Trump. He is clearly locked in the Surya Nadi. He doesn’t think about how he comes across. He only thinks of what he can get out of others and what influence he can have. He can get by with 4 hours of sleep - this is typical of people in the grip of the Surya Nadi.  The trouble, though, with being locked here is that common symptoms are inability to relax, sleep disturbance, stress, anxiety and possibly panic attacks. You don’t have to be president for those to come along. It’s sympathetic nervous system overload.

Rattling through to the British Raj: the British, Gregor says, pulled off the biggest coup in history. It took only 50,000 British to take over 350 million Indians. It can only be done if the colonisers are fully locked on the Solar Nadi, have a total belief in what they are doing, not wasting time wondering how they are perceived and how others feel. By contrast, the Indians, stuck on the Luna mind, were too introverted and unable to stand up to dictatorship. The Moguls were Solar and the British were not able to overcome them and had to work with them.

Fascinating, eh!

Devon Retreat

OK! Meditation is needed after that! Just to remind you that I’ve been invited to teach on the October 12th-15th Happiness Retreat run by Deborah Smith, International Positive Psychologist and Mindfulness Expert. The Complete Wellbeing Retreat; Happiness workshops, Yoga and Mindfulness sessions will be held in a villa on the River Dart in South Devon. We could do some Alternate Nostril Breathing (click to try it) to balance things up a little.

Home Studio

I realised last Tuesday that the classes might have been empty due to the football! I’m cutting classes… so if the one you want seems to be not available, let me know and I can add it back to the timetable if there are enough takers. You can see what’s available here. (I update this before posting this email.)  You can book here.

Training

Tomorrow, phenomenal Lisa will be teaching at Virgin Active Chelsea (7th and next Saturday too - 14th July). The class is at 10.30. If you’re wondering about the magic of her teaching in Kapsali on our retreat and the way she coaxes your best practice out of you, come along. I’m due to teach Restorative Yoga (like an adult nap time!) at Yoga West on Sundays 8th and 15th July at 3.30-4.45pm.

Yoga in the news

We go highbrow this week with the New Scientist (full article for subscribers) and find out about ‘turbocharging meditation’! ‘Yoga and meditation work better if you have a brain zap too’. It says that ‘passing a small electrical current through your brain enhances the hard-won effects of yoga and meditation, leading to greater feelings of well-being, more quickly’. Could this be military related! Cue outraged yoga teachers.

Then we go lowbrow with The Sun which helpfully tells us that ‘Your bloke may think yoga is as far from football as possible’ but the English football team do it and The Sun suggests 10 poses you can try with a partner.

CNN has a really interesting story: ‘Contemplating suicide, this Marine turned to yoga to save his life’. It was in Savasana (after his marine life of hyperarousal, hyper fight-or-flight) that the point of yoga clicked.