chapter 2
The word “yoga” has come to represent many different things to people in our culture. For some, it signifies an exercise program, for others a meditative form of stress relief or a therapeutic modality for healing from an injury. Some people use the word “yoga” as a way of describing someone they see as having a particular set of social or political values, as in “she’s such a yoga person” or “I’m not a yoga person.” In this chapter, we will explore what the traditions of yoga and mindfulness have to offer us as parents and teachers, as well as how these practices can help our children access the very best aspects of themselves.
“Yoga chitta vritti nirodha” is a phrase from the Yoga Sutras, a text widely attributed to the sage Patanjali, written more than two thousand years ago. The Yoga Sutras are in many ways the defining text of the tradition of yoga (though Patanjali didn’t invent yoga, he just wrote down the principles). The exact translation of this Sanskrit phrase varies, but the most common is “Yoga is the cessation of fluctuations in the mind.” Another translation that I love is “Yoga is the uniting of consciousness in the heart” (Devi 2007, 17). When you think about these traditional definitions of yoga, it’s immediately apparent that we are talking about something much bigger than an exercise program.
The yoga practice is rooted in a philosophical tradition that sees human suffering as the result of our own minds constantly thinking about the past, projecting into the future, worrying about things that may never happen, blaming ourselves for things that couldn’t be helped, and otherwise remaining stuck in a mental state that is unrelated to the truth of the present moment. Yoga is designed to be a path toward a place of integration where your mind, your heart, and your body are healthy, connected to each other, and tuned in to the world around you. It’s designed to be a path toward the very best version of yourself. And the happiest version of yourself.
While we often talk about practicing yoga, or doing yoga, or going to yoga class, the most appropriate use of the word “yoga” is as the end goal. When we do all of these things we are working to reach a state of Yoga where we are fully whole, integrated within ourselves, and connected mindfully and meaningfully to the world around us. When you recognize that Yoga is the goal, it’s easy to see that there are many possible paths to achieving it. Within the yoga tradition there are a wide variety of paths, or practices, that can bring a person to this state of integration. The particular path that has become most familiar in the Western world, and a path that is particularly well suited to sharing with children, is the path of ashtanga yoga, or the Eight-Limbed Path.
While yoga is a traditional practice thousands of years old, it has been evolving over time to meet the needs of a changing environment, and it is also in some ways uniquely suited for modern life. The ashtanga path of yoga addresses many of the most profound internal challenges of our lives and our children’s lives: overwhelming stress, poor physical health, overstimulation, and disconnection.
Mindfulness and the Eight-Limbed Path
While yoga has been evolving for thousands of years, so has a similar tradition called mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation is a specific type of meditation, the goal of which is nonjudgmental moment-to-moment awareness of the present. This definition was made popular by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn studied the Buddhist tradition of mindfulness meditation, combined it with Western science, and presented it in a secular format to create the Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction Program (MBSR), which is used in medical settings around the world. The MBSR program has become one of the most studied forms of meditation in the West, with tremendously positive outcomes for a wide variety of populations. The goal of MBSR, and mindfulness meditation in general, is to reduce stress, suffering, and even the experience of pain through an increased awareness of the present moment. By seeing things as they really are and becoming capable of acting with that awareness, we can reduce reactivity and impulsiveness and live life with more intention.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the goals of mindfulness and the goals of yoga are virtually identical. While mindfulness meditation has its own traditions, practices, and teachings, mindfulness is also a fundamental part of the ashtanga yoga path, and the ashtanga yoga path is a particularly clear and effective route toward mindfulness. As we’ve seen in our earlier discussion, our bodies, our minds, and even our relationships with others are all inextricably connected. The Eight-Limbed Path provides a practice that honors these interconnections. It offers a systematic approach with a road map accessible to anyone, at any stage of life.
So what are these eight limbs we keep talking about? The eight limbs are aspects of the yoga practice that are all equally important. They support each other and work together to guide us toward a state of Yoga. They are presented here in the traditional order that they appear in in the Yoga Sutras, but they don’t have to be practiced or taught in this particular order. While the aspects of the practice are called limbs, they may be better thought of as a circle or a spiral. Regardless of which one you start with, if you continue to practice you will find yourself moving through them all at ever higher levels of self-awareness, wellness, and peace.
The Yamas
The first limb is known as the yamas, which are often thought of as guidelines for interacting with the world and are the building blocks of your practice. Nischala Joy Devi, a renowned yoga teacher and author of The Healing Path of Yoga, as well as an excellent translation of the Yoga Sutras, defines yamas as “reflection of our true nature.” The translations of the yamas and niyamas that follow are hers (Devi 2007, 167):
Ahimsa (“reverence, love, and compassion for all”) is considered the most fundamental of the yamas. If there is ever a conflict between, for example, truthfulness and love and compassion, ahimsa is considered the higher calling. Don’t forget the importance of treating yourself with reverence, love, and compassion as well!
The Niyamas
As the yamas describe ways to interact with the world, the niyamas describe ways to foster your own inner peace and harmony.
The niyama of iswara pranidhana can be confusing. When the sutras encourage wholehearted dedication, what are they suggesting we dedicate ourselves to? Yoga is a practice of many paths, and there is no one right object of dedication, such as in a religion. The suggestion of iswara pranidhana is to open your heart to a universe that is larger than yourself—to make your own decisions about what moves your spirit, whether it is a symbol of divinity, an element of nature, a philosophy, or a cause—and to allow dedication to those things to fill your heart and connect you to something universal and inspiring.
Asana
Asana is the third limb of the yoga path and typically the one that most people are familiar with. It is the movement, the postures, the physical practice. Often people think that the translation of “asana” is “yoga pose,” but the sutra that describes asana is “sthira sukham asanam.” The translation of the words “sthira” and “sukham” are “effortless” and “a state of comfort or joy,” respectively. One useful translation of “asana” is “a steady and comfortable seat.”
Usually, people don’t think of yoga poses in terms like “comfortable” and “joyful,” but the goal of the asana practice is not to bend and twist our bodies into awkward and uncomfortable positions. The yoga path values the physical practice of our moving bodies for several reasons, and with several goals in mind. One is to reduce discomfort and distraction caused by the physical body. When asana is practiced regularly, the body becomes healthier, stronger, more flexible, and overall a nicer place for your spirit to live. When your body has greater health and less discomfort, your mind can be much clearer and more open for the meditation practices that are to come (and for the learning and development of childhood).
Another goal of the asana practice, and one we will talk about in the activities sections of this book, is to learn more about yourself through the movement. When we practice asana, we create all kinds of circumstances that we then have thoughts, feelings, and reactions to. Learning to notice how your body and your mind are handling these different situations, both the challenging ones and the ones that feel good, can teach you a tremendous amount about yourself and help you learn to see past your initial reaction to things (and strengthen your Thoughtful Brain in the process). Practicing challenging asana in a safe environment gives you and your child a chance to practice getting comfortable, feeling secure, and maybe even finding some joy in situations that are not easy.
Pranayama
The fourth limb of ashtanga yoga, pranayama, is the “enhancement and guidance of prana, or energy.” Our energetic life force is primarily maintained and manipulated by our breath. When our energetic state changes, for example, when we are resting or scared or exercising, our breath changes in response. The reverse is also true. When we change our breath, we can change our energetic state, encouraging increased energy or an increased sense of calm. When we practice pranayama, we practice deliberately changing the pace, rhythm, and pattern of our breath in an effort to bring our energy into greater balance, soothe our nervous system, and use our life force most effectively.
Pratyahara
The fifth limb is pratyahara: the drawing inward of our senses and the beginning of the practice of meditation (which we will discuss more in the following two limbs, dharana and dhyana). Usually, we use our senses to understand the outside world. We see and smell and taste and hear and touch, and as we do so we gather information about our environment and about other people. These senses of ours are very good at what they do and are an essential part of life, but they can also be tremendously distracting, keeping our attention and awareness riveted outside of ourselves. The practice of pratyahara teaches us to draw our senses close, turning them away from the stimulation of the outside world and using them to gather information about, and better understand, ourselves.
Dharana and Dhyana
As we move into the practice of dharana (“contemplation” or “single-pointed focus”), we are starting on a continuum of meditation experience. From pratyahara, we develop a greater capacity to turn inward and reduce the distractions of sensory experiences. This practice makes dharana substantially more accessible. Dhyana, our next limb, is a natural continuation of dharana, as it is just a sustained and more effortless state of dhyana.
In the practice of single-pointed focus, we train our minds to stay present and connected to one thing. The object of connection is just a tool to help with the practice and can be anything, from our breath to an object that we look at, such as a candle, to a mantra or saying that we repeat internally. During this practice, it is entirely natural for the mind to wander away from the chosen object over and over again. The whole point of practicing dharana is to notice when the mind wanders and get in the habit of bringing it back to the object of focus.
As we practice dharana, the length of time that awareness stays connected to the object of focus will become longer, and the times the mind wanders and must be brought back will become fewer. At some undefined point in this practice, when the sustaining of attention becomes effortless and prolonged, we slip from the practice of dharana into the state of dhyana, or meditation.
Samadhi
The culmination of all of these practices is leading us toward a state of what is called in Sanskrit “samadhi.” The eighth limb, samadhi has been translated in many different ways, often as “bliss” or “union with a universal energy.” Many teachers say that samadhi cannot be explained, only experienced, but I think it is helpful to have some sense of where we are headed with all of this effort we’ve put into our yoga practice. I think of samadhi as a state of being where the practices of the first seven limbs of yoga have created an ability for us to be mindfully present to every moment of our lives. Tuned in to our experiences, we can be truly connected to the world around us. As our minds learn to live in the present, we are freed of the suffering that ruminating on the past and worrying about the future often bring.
The LFY method of teaching yoga to children is rooted in the ashtanga yoga path, but in an effort to make the practice simpler and more appropriate for children, the eight limbs have been distilled into five elements.
Connect
Connect activities help children tune in and make sense of their experiences. They are practices that are used to develop mindful awareness of both the external world and the internal emotional state. The guiding principles of the yamas and niyamas have been considered in our Connect activities, and many of them also incorporate the practice of pratyahara (drawing inward of the senses).
Breathe
The breath is one of the most powerful tools for self-regulation. Breathe activities, based in traditional practices, help children learn to reduce anxiety, stabilize energy, and create a sense of safety and peace in the body.
Move
Move activities are based on asana practices that help children maintain a state of alert engagement, whereby hyperactive behavior is minimized but the child still feels strong and energetic.
Focus
The Focus activities in this program, rooted in dharana practices, provide deliberate meditations that teach children how to apply their focus in a step-by-step way, allowing for progressive improvement and experiences of success.
Relax
The final element of our program, Relax, gives children tools for rest, relaxation, and restoration. Exhaustion is common in children, and we know that being tired makes everything else, including paying attention, much harder. These activities, which are drawn from both asana and dharana practices, teach ways to rejuvenate, even when you aren’t sleeping.
Each one of these elements serves as the basis for chapters 4 through 8. While the elements have benefits on their own, like the limbs of ashtanga yoga they only provide the richest experience and strongest impact in combination.
While the efficacy of yoga is supported by thousands of years of tradition and wisdom passed from teacher to student, yoga has also been the subject of an increasing amount of research as it has become more popular in the West. Science now supports many of the benefits traditionally associated with yoga practice, including decreased stress and increased physical and emotional wellness. Recent advances in neuroscience confirm that contemplative practices, such as yoga and meditation, can change the physical structure of the brain, effectively training it to work in more positive and productive ways.
Increasing Attention
Yoga practice has traditionally been associated with an increased capacity for sustaining attention. One of the eight limbs, dharana, is dedicated to concentration, and aspects of breathwork and movement support it. This has been an interesting area of study for researchers, who are beginning to confirm this traditional knowledge. In one study, students who practiced mindful breathing reported that they were better able to focus, relax, reduce anxiety before taking a test, make better decisions when in conflict, and redirect their attention when off task (Napoli, Drech, and Holley 2005). A 2004 study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders found a reduction in restlessness, impulsivity, and inattentiveness specifically in boys with ADHD after twenty weeks of weekly yoga sessions (Jensen and Kenny 2004). In a 2011 study, Adele Diamond, a leader in the field of cognitive neuroscience, found that yoga (particularly an approach that addressed both physical practice and social and emotional development) was among practices that improved executive function in four- to twelve-year-olds. “Executive function” refers to the “set of cognitive functions involved in the top-down control of behavior” (Diamond and Lee 2011). It is what allows us to regulate our behavior, make good decisions, control our impulses, and selectively apply our attention. Improvements in executive function mean that the Thoughtful Brain is getting stronger.
Studies on mindfulness and meditation have also shown promising results in both children and adults. Several years’ worth of very interesting work led by Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson has shown that meditators, even beginners, had increased activation in regions of their brains needed for controlling attention. One of their most recent studies has additionally shown that extremely experienced meditators had less brain activation while also performing attention-related tasks better, attesting that meditation actually made paying attention easier for the brain (Slagter, Davidson, and Lutz 2011). While this work was done on adults, other studies on children support similar ideas. In 2010, Randye Semple, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California, found that participants in a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program for children had reduced attention problems and that these improvements were maintained for at least three months following the intervention (Semple et al. 2010).
Preliminary research on mindfulness introduced in a school setting suggests that the practice is particularly beneficial for children with executive function difficulties, with students showing increased executive function, specifically working memory, as well as planning and organizational skills (Flook et al. 2010) and inhibitory control (a measure of attention) (Oberle et al. 2012). In a review of current research, Kelly McGonigal (2012), a teacher of psychology, yoga, and meditation at Stanford University, discusses how concentration meditation “makes you better at focusing on something specific while ignoring distractions” and “can make you more capable of noticing what is happening around you.”
Creating Greater Emotional Balance
As we saw in our discussion in chapter 1, improved attention and emotional balance are intimately connected to one another. One of the benefits of yoga that practitioners often notice early on in their experience is a decreased reactivity to frustrating stimuli and an increased sense of perspective and overall well-being. The path of yoga is meant to be a way to reduce the suffering created by our own minds, and bringing balance to our emotions is an integral part of this process.
Several recent studies have supported these traditional teachings. In 2009, the Journal of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine published a pilot study of fourth- and fifth-grade students in New York who attended an after-school yoga class once a week for twelve weeks. After just twelve yoga sessions, the children who participated showed increased well-being and enhanced self-worth, and fewer negative behaviors were reported in response to stress (Berger, Silver, and Stein 2009). Another study of young adults in 2004 found a reduction in symptoms among people with mild depression after just five weeks of yoga practice (Woolery et al. 2004).
Other research looking at more specific aspects of the practice has shown positive impact on emotional balance as well. Among teens and young adults, focused breathing has been shown to increase tolerance for remaining in contact with unpredictable negative stimuli (Arch and Craske 2006), and focusing attention and awareness on a single point (as in the practice of dharana) has been found to promote a relaxation response (Roeser and Peck 2009). Mindfulness meditation intervention has been shown to have a positive impact on problematic responses to stress in children including rumination, intrusive thoughts, and emotional arousal (Mendelson et al. 2010).
As more researchers become interested in the impact of yoga and meditation, the findings have become increasingly more complex and interesting. A 2009 study led by Eileen Luders from the UCLA School of Medicine showed that meditators had more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, responsible for attention, emotional regulation, and mental flexibility. More recent work out of UCLA has found an increase in gyrification, or folding of the cortex, in meditators. These folds are thought to allow the brain to process information more effectively. This study (Luders et al. 2012) found a direct link between number of years of meditation and amount of folding. Another 2012 study (Froeliger, Garland, and McClernon) looked at a yoga practices including movement, breathwork, and meditation. It found that practitioners had more gray matter in frontal, limbic, temporal, occipital, and cerebellar regions of the brain, and that increased gray matter was positively correlated with duration of the yoga practice. This same study found that yoga practitioners reported significantly fewer cognitive failures (such as forgetting where something was left, getting distracted, having trouble making decisions, etc.).
Recent work done by Philippe Goldin, a research scientist in the psychology department at Stanford University, has shown that mindfulness meditation can actually change the way the brain responds to negative thoughts, and that practitioners show a decrease in gray matter density in the amygdala (Goldin, Ramel, and Gross 2009). In the same 2012 article mentioned earlier, Kelly McGonigal notes that “previous research had revealed that trauma and chronic stress can enlarge the amygdala and make it more reactive and more connected to other areas of the brain, leading to greater stress and anxiety. This study is one of the first documented cases showing change occurring in the opposite direction—with the brain instead becoming less reactive and more resilient.” While these researchers have been looking at the impact of meditation on the brains of adults (and more research is needed to fully understand the impact of these practices on the developing minds of children), the findings are significant, compelling, and extremely encouraging.